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EDITED BY 



ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, B.D. 

VICAR OF ALLHALLOWS BARKING 
BY THE TOWER 



A CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC 



A CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC 



BY 



WILFORD L. ROBBINS, D.D. 

DEAN OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALL SAINTS, 
ALBANY, U.S.A. 



LOJ^GMAKS, GREE:N", AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 

1902 

All rights reserved 



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CONTENTS 



ra 



CHAPTER I 
Introductory 


PAGE 
1 


CHAPTER H 




Definition of Aim . . . « 


8 



CHAPTER III 

Apologetics in the Light of Modern Thought . 19 

CHAPTER IV 
Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal ... 31 

CHAPTER V 
The Divine Claim of Christ . . , .59 

CHAPTER VI 
The Resurrection op Jesus Christ ... 88 



vi Contents 

CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

The Trustworthiness of the Christian Records 116 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Witness of Prophecy . . . . .147 

CHAPTER IX 
The Demonstration of the Spirit . . . 171 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

The subject of Apologetics is one with which 
the majority of Christians concern themselves 
only under protest. They are not interested in 
it ; it seems to them unattractive and lacking 
in inspiration. The very word, Apology, suggests 
an atmosphere of strife, argument and counter- 
argument ceaselessly battling around a theme 
suited rather to serene contemplation than to the 
turmoil of polemics. Hence it comes that the 
subject is relegated, as a rule, to the theological 
class-room ; it is regarded as one of those 
technical preparations for professional work, which 
has little to do with the more pressing problems 
of practical Christian life. And it must be con- 
fessed that, under these influences. Apologetics 
have become to a great extent formal and per- 
functory, until dreariness of treatment goes far 
to justify the aversion which is commonly felt 
for the subject. Meanwhile, it is well to exa- 
mine, a little more closely, the causes which 
have combined to produce so widespread an 
indifference, 

A 



2 A Christian Apologetic 

It is certainly a humiliating confession, but 
probably mental and moral inertia have much 
to do with the unpopularity of Apologetics. 
It is hard work to examine the rational ground 
of one*'s religious convictions, to thresh out 
honestly the arguments for and against one's 
faith. And much unquestioning belief, as well 
as much soul-disturbing doubt, springs from no 
more dignified source than unwillingness to 
undergo the exertion incident to painstaking 
inquiry. 

Others, again, who are not obnoxious to the 
charge of laziness, shrink from Apologetics be- 
cause of a certain half-formulated fear. If an 
examination of evidence be instituted, is it not 
a little doubtful whither the process may ulti- 
mately lead? They believe now, asking no 
questions ; but they are aware that many objec- 
tions to Christianity have been raised, and that 
these have been accounted cogent by men of 
distinguished intelligence. Were it not rashness, 
then, to embark on so problematical a venture ? 
It is not always easy to characterise this mood 
justly; according to circumstances, it may signify 
cowardice, or simply prudence. To tremble 
before the possible verdict of facts may easily 
pass into conscious insincerity ; but, on the other 
hand, no one is under obligation to expose him- 
self to danger unnecessarily. The plain man may 
easily be fooled by specious arguments ; is it not 



Introductory 3 

wiser for him to eschew all discussion, and trust 
implicitly the decision of such experts as he 
may choose? Undoubtedly there is a certain 
validity in this plea, and many must act thus. 
But, after all, such reasoning more or less begs 
the question. Experts are divided — how guar- 
antee that a man shall choose wisely between 
them ? Thus we are brought back to the point 
at which we started. The moment that a man 
is confronted with the Apologetic problem, he 
must face it to the best of his ability. If it 
be only in the decision as to which guide he is 
to follow, he must determine this rationally, in 
view of what appears to him good evidence. 
And this is to develop an Apologetic. 

But far removed from these lower motives of 
laziness and fear, there are subtle spiritual forces 
arrayed against an enthusiastic appreciation of 
Apologetics. The man whose whole energy is 
engrossed in constructive work along lines of 
spiritual certitude, not unnaturally feels some- 
thing of impatience at the thought of going 
back once more to the beginning, and marshal- 
ling the purely logical arguments which clear 
the ground for the structure of faith. It may 
be that there are many gaps in the intellectual 
process whereby he has arrived at his convic- 
tions; but, having reached the vantage-ground 
of assurance, and tested the strength of his 
position by experience, why waste time in per- 



4 A Christian Apologetic 

fecting what is no longer essential to the integrity 
of his religious life? There is force in this 
argument ; but at least one important considera- 
tion would seem to be ignored. The Apostolic 
injunction must be reckoned with, ''Be ready 
always to give an answer to every man that 
asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you 
with meekness and fear."^ These words are 
significant, as opening up a whole realm of 
social obligation. Even though we be satisfied, 
we have not fulfilled our religious duty until 
we have done all that in us lies to give satis- 
faction to our fellows. The "reason of the 
hope that is in us" is at least one of the op- 
portunities offered for exercising an influence 
on the belief of our brother. Undoubtedly we 
exert such an influence by the mere fact of our 
own effective and triumphant faith. Often this 
is the most convincing argument which we can 
bring to bear in the interests of religion. But 
there are minds, with a predominant craving 
for intellectual enlightenment, which demand a 
different kind of help. The law of charity 
prompts that we offer this help, even though 
we deem that for ourselves the need of formulated 
Apologetics is outgrown. 

But, while treating the mystical plea — that 
spiritual advance renders logical argument un- 
necessary — with all respect, one is haunted by the 
1 1 Peter iii. 15. 



Introductory 5 

suspicion that, even as regards the individual him- 
self, it were best not to press the claim too closely. 
Clear reasoning is always a healthy antidote to 
vagaries of the imagination. Sometimes those far 
advanced in holiness need the medicine. The 
most exalted of saints will not be less spiritual for 
a little plodding in the prosaic fields of critical 
investigation. Exceeding reverence for Jacts is 
an emotion which cannot be too often stimulated, 
for it is intimately allied with the loftiest 
virtues of sincerity and honesty. Hard labour 
in establishing the rational grounds which justify 
our assuming the attitude of faith at all must 
prove tonic in its effect. Many things which 
do not directly subserve spiritual edification, 
yet induce an earnestness of temper, a gentle- 
ness and humility, upon which all large spiritual 
results are conditional. Apologetics ought not, 
then, to be regarded as something which the 
mass of Christians are at liberty to neglect. 
Whether we are instinctively drawn to this 
line of thought is of secondary moment; our 
duty is plain — we are bound by every interest 
of our own spiritual development, as well as by 
the law of charity, to acquaint ourselves with 
the strongest arguments which can be adduced 
in defence of the Faith. 

But the moment that we attempt to formulate 
any general system of Apology, we are met by 
a new difficulty. Every man needs a different 



6 A Christian Apologetic 

Apologetic. The force of an argument varies 
with the idiosyncrasy of the individual. Tem- 
perament, education, character, all go to deter- 
mine shades of susceptibility to truth. To one 
who is keenly alive to nice logical distinctions, an 
argument will wear a very different face from 
that w^hich it presents to the man who is open 
only to obvious and more or less coarse contrasts. 
The scholar's difficulties will have no meaning to 
the man in the street; and the objections of the 
latter will in turn seem trivial to the keener in- 
sight of more comprehensive knowledge. Argu- 
ments against Christianity, which range from the 
subtlest metaphysical speculations, and the most 
abstruse points of literary criticism, to the crass 
tirades of the popular lecturer, cannot be met by 
one and the same method of defence. In just so 
far as a system of Apologetics seeks to cover the 
whole field, and meet all possible objections, will 
it probably lose in convincing power. The ring 
of reality will be wanting wherever the apologist 
does not himself feel the full force of the oppos- 
ing argument. And, as the strength of a chain 
depends on its weakest link, so a really strong 
appeal w ill be rendered ineffective, if, for the sake 
of thoroughness, it is made to include anything 
approaching a logical tour de force. It is 
better, therefore, as far as practical helpfulness 
is concerned, not to attempt too exhaustive a 
treatment, but to allow free play to the personal 



Introductory 7 

equation. The vitality and intensity thus imported 
into the argument will more than compensate for 
what is lost in the way of comprehensiveness. 

This must serve as excuse, if any be needed, for 
the method adopted in the following pages. No 
attempt has been made to adapt the defence to 
all possible lines of attack. The traditional 
divisions of the subject have been largely ig- 
nored. Many well-worn arguments have been 
abandoned, not necessarily as unsound, but be- 
cause they have failed to appeal to the writer as 
having weight in view of the special exigencies 
of the present day. Nothing, indeed, has been 
included, which has not personally been put 
to the proof, and found efficacious in practical 
dealing with unbelief. Imperfect as the treat- 
ment may be in detail, it is hoped that the main 
outline of the argument will prove suggestive 
as a useful mode of approach to the well-nigh 
inexhaustible theme of Christian Evidences. 



CHAPTER II 

DEFINITION OF AIM 

A NUMBER of questions press for settlement before 
we can proceed to formulate any Apologetic argu- 
ment. First in importance is that which concerns 
the nature of the proof which we may hope to 
establish. Do we account it within the reach of 
Apology to demonstrate the validity of the Chris- 
tian claim in such fashion that a reasonable man 
must believe? Or, on the other hand, are we 
to accept the more modest role of those who 
only seek to establish a probability? This dis- 
tinction is of vital significance; to be in any 
doubt concerning it is to introduce hopeless 
confusion into our reasoning. 

Moreover, it is of prime moment that we 
should understand clearly just what it is that we 
desire to prove. Vagueness, here again, spells 
sure disaster. It may seem, indeed, almost an 
impertinence to raise this question with reference 
to our present subject. Does not the very term, 
Apologetics, connote a definite line of inquiry 
and a self-evident purpose ? But this superficial 
simplicity yields at the touch of analysis, and 

8 



Definition of Aim 9 

we discover beneath it the possibility of widely 
varying aims. As a matter of fact, the impo- 
tence of much Apologetic literature is due to the 
indeterminateness of its reasoning. The argument 
fluctuates, now making for one goal and now for 
another, with the inevitable result that it finally 
arrives nowhere. For instance, what is the Chris- 
tian apologist to take for granted ? Shall he 
traverse the whole ground of the theistic position, 
and vindicate the truth against the aberrations 
of materialism and pantheism ; or shall he assume 
the facts of natural religion, and only seek to 
defend the special claims put forward by the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ? Either procedure may 
be legitimate, but it conduces to clearness of 
thought to state which alternative is to be 
adopted. If the latter be the course chosen, it 
still remains to decide definitely what that Chris- 
tianity is which we purpose to defend. Does it 
include any formulated system of theology.? 
What is its relation to popular notions of in- 
spiration, of miracles, of ecclesiastical polity ? 
Can we, for Apologetic purposes, distinguish be- 
tween what we may term essential Christianity 
and secondary truths, between premises and 
deductions from those premises.? 

Enough has been said to show that it is the 
part of wisdom to decide clearly on the path 
along which we propose to travel, and not set 
forth too hastily on an adventurous enterprise. 



10 A Christian Apologetic 

Many a logical disaster might have been averted 
by the simple precaution of defining aim and 
purpose accurately before plunging into the thick 
of argument. 

In the first place, then, it should be stated 
that the argument of the present volume assumes 
that there is a God. The witness of conscience 
and reason to this truth is generally recognised 
by the best thought of the present day. And 
even amidst the coarser forms of unbelief an 
avowed atheism is rare. The popular mood is 
not that of dogmatic denial, but rather that of 
a vague and questioning agnosticism. If there 
be a God, can we know Him ? Has He revealed 
Himself.? Are there valid reasons for attribut- 
ing to Him a moral nature, as we understand 
the word moral ? Our approach to these ques- 
tions will be indirect. It is believed that an 
answer to them will be found, by implication, in 
the following pages ; but they do not constitute 
the guiding clue in our special line of investi- 
gation. 

The end which we explicitly have in view, is 
to vindicate the reasonableness of the belief that 
Jesus Christ is the supreme revelation of the 
living God. By supreme is meant adequate and 
final, in the sense that the revelation is all-suffi- 
cient for the religious needs of men. And while 
we hold that the abundant riches of His Person 
will ever find fuller and fuller recognition, as 



Definition of Aim 11 

the Spirit guides the Church into all truth, and 
that thus the Christian revelation is progres- 
sive, yet we maintain that the Gospel is not 
merely relatively, but absolutely, the best gift of 
God to man. 

There is a sentiment widely current that the 
man who accepts the authority of Jesus Christ 
as divine is in a precarious position so far as 
reason is concerned ; that, if he believes, he does 
so at the expense of his intelligence. This is 
constantly implied in much of the scientific and 
philosophical literature of the day, and finds 
more popular expression in the problem-novel 
and realistic drama. It is, moreover, the pre- 
mise on which multitudes, who have drifted into 
religious indifferentism, erect their practical 
philosophy of life. And even within the Church 
it is all too common ; many Christians are 
secretly filled with amaze at the signs of the 
times, and feel that they can but cling despe- 
rately to their faith, in spite of reason. This 
mood becomes articulate in the shibboleth " don'^t 
think," which is the watchword of intellectual 
despair not infrequently heard on the lips of 
religious reactionaries. Now, it is against this 
phase of modern infidelity that our argument 
arrays itself. It seeks to prove that, however 
difficult it may be to believe, it is from the point 
of view of reason at least equally difficult to 
disbelieve. These difficulties may thus be found 



12 A Christian Apologetic 

to neutralise each other, and leave the soul free to 
exercise its own distinctive powers in the discern- 
ment of spiritual things. 

But in seeking to prove that it is reasonable 
to believe, we do not take upon ourselves the 
task of presenting an irrefragable demonstration. 
There is a curious vagueness in most minds as 
to the exact degree of conclusiveness which may 
justly be demanded of Christian Evidences. And 
this vagueness may work serious detriment to 
the apologist. Many excellent arguments are 
spoiled by claiming too much. We are carried 
along by a sound logic, feel its force, and are 
sympathetically open to conviction, when sud- 
denly an unqualified conclusion is drawn which 
arouses to instant revolt every instinct of fair 
play within us. This has been perhaps the 
besetting weakness of Apologetic literature. 
Spiritual things, from their very nature, are 
not to be demonstrated by any purely intel- 
lectual process. The most that reason can do 
is to clear the ground ; its function is only in- 
direct in generating belief. And even as regards 
those outward facts which are most closely 
related to spiritual truth, the claim to establish 
them beyond a peradventure is futile. Take as 
an illustration the central fact recorded in the 
Gospels, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The 
historic reality of this fact not only has not 
been proved, but it is manifestly impossible that 



Definition of Aim 13 

it should be proved, in such sense as would 
warrant us in applying the word, demonstration, 
to the argument. This holds true of every 
historic fact, though the amount of evidence 
required to produce conviction in a given case 
varies with the practical consequences involved. 
If such fact is of little present moment in the 
affairs of men, slight proof suffices. As its im- 
plications grow more serious, its establishment 
as a fact becomes proportionately more difficult ; 
at least, stronger and more patent arguments are 
requisite to that end. In the case of a fact 
replete with the most momentous consequences, 
like that of the Resurrection, it is doubtful 
whether any mere logical process can establish 
its certainty so as to compel acknowledgment 
on the part of all truth-loving men. The most 
that we can hope is so to marshal the evidence 
that a reasonable probability shall be established, 
and thus, the question being lifted above the 
entanglements of the understanding, spiritual 
considerations may legitimately turn the scale 
in favour of belief. But to adopt the slightest 
arrogance of tone, boasting of certainty when, 
in fact, our logical achievement is of a humbler 
order, is wantonly to undermine the force of 
the most careful reasoning, and to discredit our 
cause with all who think clearly. 

Some will doubtless argue that this admission 
tends to rob Apologetics of all practical effective- 



14 A Christian Apologetic 

ness. Religion, they will say, must be based on 
certitude, probabilities can never stir the enthusi- 
asm of the heart. This is true; but the certitude 
is that of faith, and not of intellectual demonstra- 
tion. And if it seem a small thing to increase 
the weight of a probability, let it be remembered 
by what shght and impalpable movements the 
spirit is determined toward belief or unbelief. 

Walter Pater, in commenting on a well-known 
character in fiction, draws a subtle picture of 
the influence of nice differences of temperament : 
" Robert Elsmere was a type of a large class 
of minds which cannot be sure that the sacred 
story is true. It is philosophical, doubtless, and 
a duty to the intellect to recognise our doubts, 
to locate them, perhaps to give them practical 
effect. It may be also a moral duty to do this. 
But then there is also a large class of minds 
which cannot be sure it is false — minds of very 
various decrees of conscientiousness and intel- 
lectual power, up to the highest. They will 
think those who are quite sure it is false un- 
philosophical through lack of doubt. For their 
part, they make allowance in their scheme of life 
for a great possibility, and with some of them 
that bare concession of possibility (the subject 
of it being what it is) becomes the most im- 
portant fact in the world. The recognition of 
it straightway opens wide the door to hope and 
love; and such persons are, as we fancy they 



Definition of Aim 15 

always will be, the nucleus of a Church. Their 
particular phase of doubt, of philosophic uncer- 
tainty, has been the secret of millions of good 
Christians, multitudes of worthy priests. They 
knit themselves to believers, in various degrees, 
of all ages.'"* ^ If there be truth in this delicate 
analysis, then to establish a probability may 
prove a mighty accomplishment in the interests 
of faith. 

We have stated that our single aim is to prove 
the reasonableness of believing that Jesus Christ 
is the supreme revelation of God. We do not 
seek, however, to establish any theological pro- 
positions, by way of inference, from that revelation. 
In saying that Jesus Christ is the revelation of 
God, we certainly imply that He is divine. But 
any exact doctrinal definition of the divinity of 
Christ lies beyond the proper scope of Apolo- 
getics. We are concerned with a question prior 
to all theological developments, namely : Is there 
reasonable ground in the recorded life of Jesus 
Christ for the building up of any theology what- 
soever.? Nor are we directly interested in sub- 
stantiating any special theory of inspiration. 
It is enough for our immediate purpose if 
the Scripture may be relied upon as giving 
trustworthy testimony concerning the life and 
character of Jesus Christ. The exigencies of 
our argument, indeed, require us to propound 

1 "Essays from the Guardian," by Walter Pater, p. 73. 



16 A Cliristian Ai^ologetic 

tentatively certain views concern in or the miracu- 
lous element which enters into Christianity, but 
these are entirely subsidiary and incidental. Our 
interest centres solely in the fact of the divine- 
human life of Jesus Christ, and the validity of 
His claim to our whole-hearted allegiance. 

It may help us if we bear in mind an analogy 
draw^n from the tactics of earthly warfare. It is 
good policy, when the battle is hot, to concentrate 
one's forces around the citadel. If the line of 
defence be stretched rashly, the ground cannot be 
as well covered, and a vigorous attack on the part 
of the foe may find the base of supplies exposed, 
and the vital centre of the whole struggle un- 
guarded. Apology is warfare. The truth dear 
to us is threatened ; we would fain defend it. 
It is as important that the defence should be 
conducted with intelligence as that we should 
fight valorously. The essential truth of the 
Gospel is the citadel ; until we have made that 
quite safe we will not suffer our attention to be 
diverted, or our forces scattered, by any feint of 
the foe to capture an outpost. ^Ve would not 
impute disingenuousness of motive, but certain 
it is that the antagonists of Christianity seem 
always quick to seize the opportunity of obscuring 
the main issue by raising a cloud of dust on the 
outskirts of the field. INIr. Huxley's trenchant 
attack, in his controversy with Dr. Wace, on the 
credibility of the miracle wrouo^ht on the Gadarene 



Definition of Aim 17 

demoniacs, is a case in point. His avowed aim 
was to make the whole question of the truth of 
the Gospel narrative hinge on a physiological 
theory. And while the details of such secondary 
questions are made the subject of lively debate, 
it is quietly assumed by the rationalistic objector 
that no stronger arguments than those under 
immediate discussion are available for the de- 
fence of the Christian position. Of course, 
in this particular instance, Mr. Huxley main- 
tained that demoniacal possession is so intimately 
inwrought with the whole structure of the 
Gospels that, with it, their general trustworthi- 
ness must stand or fall, and that, therefore, his 
mode of attack was amply justified. But it is just 
this contention that we deny. If it could be 
proved that the writers of the New Testament 
were mistaken in their diagnosis of certain 
diseases, and that they represented their Master 
as sharing in their ignorance, this would not 
necessarily impair the soundness of their testi- 
mony concerning the moral and spiritual character 
of Jesus Christ and His teaching. Therefore, to 
pour scorn and ridicule on one incident recorded 
in the Scripture narrative, while it may be clever 
polemic, is absolutely worthless as an argument 
against the divine claim of the Gospel. We 
must resolutely decline to be entrapped by any 
such device. There will be time enough to de- 
bate concerning details when we have thoroughly 



18 A Christian Apologetic 

settled the more important question upon which 
the significance and interest of the details depend. 
There is only one question essential to the in- 
tegrity of Christianity : AVas Jesus Christ divine ? 
That a man who respects reason and obeys its 
dictates can believe that He was, is the thesis 
which we are interested to prove. 



CHAPTER III 

APOLOGETICS IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN 
THOUGHT 

A NICE discernment is needed if we are to adjust 
wisely the relative claims of past and present 
modes of thought. It is easy to err, either on 
the side of undue sympathy with the spirit of 
the age, or on that of reactionary protest; but 
to rise to a truly catholic judgment is hard. 

We are all familiar with that provincial type of 
mind which reasons as though there were a kind 
of finality in modern scientific enlightenment, 
and the intellectual acquisitions of the past 
were discredited. But over against this exag- 
geration stands another, which more particularly 
threatens the religious temperament. Deference 
for the past is wise, but when it breeds indiffer- 
ence or suspicion toward the great currents of 
present-day thought, it easily degenerates into a 
gross superstition. Not infrequently an amazing 
dishonour is thus done to God in the name of 
religion. He is, in effect, banished to a remote 
period of history, and the tokens of His presence 
are sought for diligently in ancient records 

19 



20 A Christian Apologetic 

and far-ofF events. Meanwhile, all the pro- 
foundest movements of contemporary life are 
accounted secular, save as they dimly reflect 
the light of former revelations, when God vouch- 
safed a more immediate knowledge of Himself. 
It matters little, whether with Protestant pre- 
judice we confine this revelation narrowly to 
Scriptural events, or, with wider ecclesiastical 
horizon, include the so-called ages of faith. Any 
sympathetic understanding of the past is bought 
too dearly if it sap the enthusiasm of our interest 
in the present revelation of the living God. 
We have no warrant for believing that any 
time was ever more sacred than the present, 
any spot holier than that whereon we stand — if 
only our eye be enlightened to behold the vision, 
our ear unstopped to hear the word of God. 

The bearing of this truth on Apologetics is 
obvious. Not only must we, for practical reasons, 
adjust our method to the special needs of the 
time, or else fail utterly in the one purpose 
which we have in view, but, in the more 
searching criticism to which the credentials of 
Christianity are subjected in these latter days, 
we are to see a providential leading of God. 
Individual critics may, or may not, be actuated 
by w^orthy motives; but the mighty movement 
of which they are representative has divine 
meaning, and is pregnant with spiritual conse- 
quences. Not grudgingly, but eagerly and reve- 



In the Light of Modern Thought 21 

rently, should we seek to adapt our argument 
to the special exigencies of modern thought. 
It is true, that in studying the attacks of un- 
belief from the earliest Christian centuries down 
to the present day, we discover once and again 
similarities which tempt us to exclaim — it is 
the same old story always. But while certain 
broad lines of objection abide, the accent with 
which they are uttered is shifted ; and, to a 
great extent, the development of the scientific 
and critical method within the last century has 
completely revolutionised the whole aspect of 
the controversy. 

If one were asked to name the most valuable 
contribution of the nineteenth century to the 
world's thought, it surely would not be far 
wide of the mark to answer — the inductive 
method. Of course, induction is no new thing. 
It is only necessary to define the word to dis- 
cover that it is not only the scientific, but the 
common - sense mode of increasing knowledge. 
It has been practised in all ages and by all 
men in their ordinary processes of thinking. 
And yet we are not wrong in claiming that 
induction is distinctive of the thought of the 
last hundred years ; for, during that period, it 
has been applied to well-nigh all fields of re- 
search, with a thoroughness quite unparalleled 
before, and has produced astonishing results, 
both theoretical and practical. 



22 A Christian Apologetic 

So simple and so manifestly rational is the 
method, that we are left to wonder that the 
world waited so long before using it in systematic 
fashion for the discovery of truth. To define the 
method in briefest terms — it consists in the 
accumulation of facts, the classification of facts, 
and in generalisation, or the inference of universal 
law^s from the facts thus classified. It is hardly 
necessary to point out that the inference from an 
indefinite number of facts cannot be an absolute 
universal. But by this method we establish a 
probable universal, or working hypothesis, which 
can in turn be indefinitely verified by further 
observation, until it is practically proved to be 
an unvarying law. The assumption that, because 
this is pre-eminently the method of science, it 
must needs be strictly limited in its application, 
is ill-considered. It is hard to see why its 
application should not be as wide as the domain 
of facts ; though, by this, we do not mean that it 
is the only legitimate method of reasoning. The 
charge is sometimes brought against theologians 
that they deny its validity as applied to the 
phenomena of religion, and that they prefer to 
assume premises arbitrarily, and thence deduce 
facts according to their inclination or convenience. 
But if there be any colour of reality in this con- 
tention, it is certainly due quite as much to the 
narrow construction which the scientific mind 
puts on the inductive method, as to the dogma- 



In the Light of Modern Thought 23 

tism of the theologian. Very inadequate views 
as to the exact nature and significance of that 
method are widely prevalent. Its metaphysical 
implications are disregarded, and the facts deemed 
worthy of investigation are confined within ab- 
surdly restricted lines. 

There are certain postulates upon which any 
process of induction must rest, and these ought 
to be recognised clearly. Moreover, these postu- 
lates vary with the class of facts under considera- 
tion. However the truth may be ignored or 
disguised, it still remains undeniable that, for 
the scientific investigation of the simplest material 
phenomena, we must assume that the universe is 
essentially rational. Unless one is to adopt the 
attitude of a pure, subjective idealism — a course 
which presumably will not appeal to the scientific 
temper of the day — there must be an outward 
order corresponding to the categories of our own 
mind ; otherwise, there could be no classification 
of facts, or inference establishing general laws. 
In application to moral facts, the analogous 
postulate, that the universe is essentially moral, 
is requisite. By this we mean that there are 
moral laws discernible, which are just as inevit- 
able and as universal as the physical laws in 
accord with which the material world is governed. 
The moralist must not be blamed — as though he 
were hostile to the inductive method — if he pro- 
tests against any juggling with the meaning of 



24 A Christian Ajyologetic 

the word moral. He has no choice but to set 
himself irreconcilably against any derivation of 
the moral ideal from the necessities of material 
existence, or mere considerations of social ex- 
pediency. Here the real question at issue is, not 
whether a certain method of investioration is 
applicable to a certain class of facts, but whether 
there is ground for regarding the facts themselves 
as forming an independent class. It were a mis- 
nomer to speak of the inductive study of morals, 
without making the postulate that there is an 
eternal distinction between right and wrong. 
Similarly, as regards induction in the spiritual 
sphere, the requisite postulate is that the uni- 
verse is essentially spiritual. If there are no 
spiritual facts, then the whole question as to 
applying induction to them falls. But if there 
are such facts, then in any attempt to classify 
them and arrive at a knowledge of general laws, 
we are obliged to assume the existence of a 
spiritual world, an ordered domain where love 
reigns supreme ; for this alone can justify scientific 
inquiry. 

The inductive method, thus interpreted, plainly 
includes religion in its sweep — so far, at least, as 
religion can be made the subject of intellectual 
research. And Apologetics must frankly reckon 
with such a method, if the evidential argument is 
to have cogency in the present day. We cannot 
start with a theory spun out of our own minds 



In the Light of Modern Thought 25 

or based on authority, and deduce facts from the 
theory. We must be content to begin with facts, 
and advance from these to our general proposi- 
tions. The facts, moreover, must be plain facts, 
level with the apprehension of the man whom we 
hope to convince. If there be room to doubt the 
facts adduced as a basis of the induction, this 
will vitiate the force of the whole argument. 
And here it becomes evident why the funda- 
mental ground of Apologetics must be shifted 
from miracles to the moral character of Jesus 
Christ, and verifiable facts of present religious 
experience. The question of miracles will come 
up for more detailed discussion later; but this 
much is self-evident, the process of reasoning, 
whereby we seek to establish the miracles of 
the Gospel, must be far more complicated than 
that required to prove the moral supremacy 
of Jesus Christ, and the answer which He makes 
to the deepest cravings of the heart. There are 
other reasons which render the subject of the 
miraculous unsuited for a place in the forefront 
of our argument. There is the great difficulty of 
definition ; for the modern mind, with its reve- 
rence for law, revolts against the suggestion of a 
sporadic violation of nature's order. Nor is it 
perfectly plain how, in any case, a mere physical 
event — be it never so wonderful — can accredit a 
message as divine. But, entirely apart from all 
such considerations, we need present facts, patent 



26 A Christian Aj^ologetic 

to every man who will turn his eyes in the right 
direction, if we are to formulate an inductive 
argument having weight and consistency. This 
would seem to be the most wide-reaching modifi- 
cation required in modern Apologetics — a shifting 
of the accent from the past to the present, from 
the miraculous to the moral. It does not neces- 
sarily mean the abandonment of any traditional 
position. We merely change the formation in 
our line of defence to meet the varying needs of 
the hour. And it is the part of wisdom to yield 
ourselves cheerfully to the demand, without quali- 
fication and without unnecessary protest. 

Our meaning will be clearer, perhaps, if we here 
present in briefest outline the course of the pro- 
posed argument. 

The fundamental fact, upon which all subse- 
quent reasoning will be based, is the unique moral 
influence of Jesus Christ. However explained, 
the fact cannot be denied — Jesus Christ is the 
central figure of ail history. When brought into 
comparison with Him, all the great names of the 
world's heroes shrink into relative insignificance. 
If, for a moment, the thought of other religious 
founders gives us pause, we have but to consider 
the debt which civilisation owes to His teach- 
ing to be assured afresh that no one can seri- 
ously compete with Him for moral pre-eminence. 
Jesus Christ introduced a new spiritual impetus, 
seemingly different in kind, and not in degree 



In the Light of Modern Thought 27 

alone, from every other that the world has 
known. 

Moreover, we must not fail to note one striking 
aspect of the sway which Jesus Christ has gained 
over mankind. His Person, and not merely His 
teaching, has drawn to itself the ardours of a most 
intense devotion through all the ages since He lived 
on earth. And among those who have thus loved 
Him, we find a majority of the greatest and the 
noblest among men. Criticism cannot assail this 
fact; it may offer various objections to the tradi- 
tional inference; it may even go the length of 
asserting that the Christ who has thus moulded 
history is but a phantom of the myth-making 
imagination. But the fact, that the Christ depicted 
in the Gospels has exercised this influence, is indu- 
bitable. And this fact remains to be accounted 
for, to be correlated with other facts of the moral 
and spiritual experience of mankind. " What 
think ye of Christ ? *" — rings out a challenge which 
no man may shirk. Is it not strange, at least 
full of mysterious suggestiveness, that a personal 
influence should reach down thus through the 
centuries, and assert itself as of crucial import 
in the most intimate passages of our spiritual 
life ? 

When we come to examine more closely the 
character of Him who has thus impressed Himself 
on the conscience of the world, we discover seem- 
ingly incompatible elements exquisitely blended 



28 A Christian Apologetic 

into harmony. Humility and self-assertion, gentle- 
ness and uncompromising severity, are fused into 
the unity of matchless moral beauty. We venture 
to call this also an incontrovertible fact; for while 
individual critics, in the interest of an a priori 
theory, may consider one or another of these traits 
inconsistent with the temper ^^hich they would 
fain ascribe to Jesus Christ, the suffrage of the 
world is against them. The Christ who has won 
allegiance is the Christ of the Gospels, and not 
the sentimental peasant of M. Renan. Nor, be it 
said with all respect for a great and devout 
thinker, is He the cautiously humanitarian Jesus 
of Dr. Martineau. Some attempt must be made 
to account for the unparalleled moral beauty of 
Jesus Christ as portrayed in the Gospels. Is the 
record more likely to be the transcript of reality, 
or to be a fiction composed by various authors 
under the influence of unrestrained fancy and a 
blind enthusiasm ? 

Wonderful deeds are recorded as marking the 
life of Jesus Christ. One supreme triumph — that 
over death — has been accounted the final seal of 
His divine mission. However true it may be 
that, for us, Jesus Christ authenticates the mira- 
cles, and that standing alone they have lost much 
of their evidential value, yet even so, the rapid 
and all but universal belief in the Resurrection, 
conjoined with the striking fruits of that belief 
in the life and character of the first disciples, is 



In the Light of Modern Thought 29 

a fact which must be faced. Has any explana- 
tion yet been offered as rational, on the whole, 
as the acknowledgment that the record of His 
rising from the dead is an authentic historical 
narrative ? 

Again, we behold Jesus Christ fulfilling the 
hopes of Israel. The long expectation of the 
prophets is at last triumphantly vindicated in 
the establishment of the Church of the New 
Covenant. Is this a fortuitous happening, or 
does the conjunction of prophecy and fulfilment 
lend added weight to the claims of Christ ? There 
is hardly need to protest, in these days, against 
that mistaken view which regards prophecy as a 
kind of magic art. It must be conceded, more- 
over, that modern criticism has discredited the 
traditional exegesis of many so-called Messianic 
passages in the Old Testament Scriptures. But 
no criticism can invalidate the fact of the irrepres- 
sible longing and looking-forward, the mysterious 
forecast of righteous king and victorious kingdom, 
which constitutes the essence of the Messianic 
consciousness of Israel. This hope was seem- 
ingly without warrant in outward circumstances, 
yet it persisted for centuries, and the event has 
justified it. A psychological fact, so unique in 
character, demands investigation. Jesus Christ, 
in turn, boldly prophesied concerning the future 
of His Church. Is there evidence to-day of a 
Kingdom of God in the world, which justifies 



30 A Christian AjDologetic 

His teaching as to its perennial influence and 
assured triumph ? 

An Apologetic which proceeds on these lines 
may not hope, perhaps, to win brilliant logical 
victories. It will not vaunt itself as dispersing 
all doubts and difficulties. Many a mysterious 
problem will remain unsolved, many a counter- 
vailing argument imperfectly answered. But, at 
least, it may serve to show how unbelief is to 
be stirred out of its thoroughly unphilosophical 
dogmatism. And it may offer enough light 
to lead men to test for themselves, with greater 
confidence, those spiritual processes whereby alone 
the joy of an assured faith can be attained. 



CHAPTER IV 

JESUS CHRIST AND THE MORAL IDEAL 

It will hardly be denied, by the most determined 
opponent of Christianity, that Jesus Christ holds 
a place of pre-eminent importance in the history 
of morals. But we are interested to define more 
exactly just what this admission involves. Is 
His pre-eminence unique, or is it only a relative 
pre-eminence ? There have been many moral 
teachers who have illuminated ethics by flashes 
of rare and beautiful insight. There are moral 
and spiritual heroes, whose presence in the world 
has brought refreshment amidst the wastes of 
the commonplace, and who shine like lights in 
the darkness. Sometimes their words embody 
explicit teaching, which enlarges the sum total 
of ethical knowledge and broadens the horizon 
of duty. Sometimes the enthusiasm of their 
personal love of righteousness stirs the sluggish 
heart of humanity by the contagion of a splendid 
example. Under the touch of moral genius dead 
truths are quickened into life, and all the most 
ordinary events and circumstances become vibrant 
with heavenly significance. Is Jesus Christ to be 

31 



32 A Christian Apologetic 

classed with these masters of righteousness, as 
singularly gifted indeed, but still only one among 
many, or does He stand alone ? 

The teaching and the example of Jesus 
Christ have moved men profoundly, but it 
is not in these alone that we recognise the 
secret of His power. The strongest appeal 
to the hearts of men lies in Hknself^ in the 
inexpressible graciousness of His Person. Holy 
men have often, it is true, aroused ardent devo- 
tion among their contemporaries. But here is 
a personal influence which the lapse of time 
seems powerless to dull, and which draws within 
its circle all sorts and conditions of men. We 
are impressed, moreover, with the fact that 
other moral teachers are, as it were, servants 
of the house, but He is as " a Son over God's 
house." We think of them as ennobled through 
their devoted zeal ; the glory of the ideal, which 
they serve, is reflected in their life and character; 
it is greater than they, they partake of its 
greatness. But, in the case of Jesus Christ, the 
ideal seems one with the personality ; we cannot 
separate between them. His character shines 
with its own intrinsic light ; He is righteousness 
incarnate. Thus we instinctively j udge. Whether 
this difference in our estimate be due merely to 
traditional associations, or be grounded in a real 
distinction, demands further inquiry. We can 
reach a satisfactory decision only when we have 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 33 

examined more closely what we mean by the 
moral ideal, and have placed before ourselves, 
in sharper outline, the character of Him who 
has been esteemed, throughout the ages, the 
veritable Sun of righteousness. 

Any prolonged discussion of the nature of 
conscience would take us too far from our 
immediate theme. But it is permissible to 
state broadly certain general truths. And this 
may help us to understand more clearly the rela- 
tion of the character of Christ to that ideal 
which dominates our moral life. 

It is manifest that we possess a faculty where- 
by we apprehend the good, just as we have 
a faculty by which we apprehend the true, and 
a faculty for apprehending the beautiful. Of 
course, all psychological analysis involves ab- 
straction, and we are in danger of being misled 
by the very process whereby we seek to clear our 
thought. This holds true of any such mode of 
distinguishing between reason, conscience, and 
taste, as that adopted above. We must needs 
analyse our complex experience, but it is a crude 
mistake to conceive of human nature as though 
it were composed of a bundle of separate faculties. 
Perhaps we shall avoid confusion by a slight change 
of statement. Let us say that reality appeals to 
us under the three aspects of truth, beauty, and 
goodness; and, in our attempt to apprehend 
these different forms, we exercise faculties which 

C 



34 A Christian Apologetic 

seem to be distinct, in that by no psychological 
process known to us can any one of them be 
derived from the others. 

Meanwhile there is great value in thus cor- 
relating conscience and reason. For instance, 
the infallibility of conscience is a subject about 
which much discussion has been raised. Probably 
the simplest solution of the difficulty lies in re- 
cognising that its infallibility is strictly analogous 
to the infallibility of reason. We should hardly 
dare assert that reason is fallible, for thereby 
we should remove the one assurance of any 
certain knowledge upon which our whole trust 
in the essential verity of things is based. Yet 
men blunder in their reasoning constantly, and 
arrive at most erroneous conclusions. The word 
infallible is not a happy one in this connection. 
We must accept our intellectual constitution as 
substantially sound and trustworthy, or else fall 
into the hopeless circle of universal scepticism. 
But the premises upon which we exercise our 
reasoning faculty are imperfect, and hence the 
inferences which we draw from them will partake 
of the same imperfection. Similarly with con- 
science ; the moral imperative rings out clear and 
unmistakable — there is a right and a wrong, and 
it is our bounden duty to do the right. But, in 
our particular judgments concerning right and 
wrong, our outlook is limited, our moral premises 
are inadequate ; hence our conclusions must fall 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 35 

short of perfection. It is plain that, as hamper- 
ing restrictions of ignorance and wilfulness are 
removed, our moral judgments may be inde- 
finitely clarified, and approximate ever more and 
more closely to the perfect standard : but, until 
we see face to face, and know even as we are 
known, something of imperfection will inhere 
in them. 

Conscience, then, is to be regarded as a true 
guide, its dictates are as august and reverend as 
those of reason. But it is a faculty demanding 
careful cultivation, that barriers to its free exer- 
cise may be done away ; and it may well look for 
light and leading to the masters of the spiritual life. 

It is pertinent, in this connection, to point out 
that any theory as to the historic development of 
conscience cannot invalidate its present worth.^ 
It may have been educated, at the first, along 
lines of utilitarianism ; the well-being of the 
family or the clan may have been the occasion 
arousing its earliest monitions. None the less, 

1 " The doctrine of cumulation by inheritance can never 
help us to any genesis of moral faculty out of data that are 
unmoral. The transmission of improving aptitudes may 
render rapid and easy, processes which were slow and diffi- 
cult ; rich and intense, feelings that were poor and faint ; 
immediate, perceptions that were mediate ; abstract, cogni- 
tions that were concrete. But it cannot give what it does 
not contain ; no induction, however wide and long, can yield 
us predicates never found in its particulars ; and from an 
experience, be it of one generation or of a million, into which 
at one end only the sentient element enters, at the other 
nothing that is moral will come out." — MartineAU's Seat of 
Authority in Religion^ p. 99. 



36 A Christian Apologetic 

its present message of an absolute standard and an 
eternal obligation must be judged according to 
its own intrinsic value. We do not question the 
dignity and trustworthiness of reason, because the 
first steps of its evolution are to be traced in 
processes of exceeding humility. We acknowledge 
the validity of its dictates, from the first dim 
awakening of consciousness through sense-percep- 
tion, on and up to its widest generalisations and 
profoundest philosophic thought. Organic growth 
is always to be judged by its final stages, and not 
by the germ from which it has originally sprung. 
As well take the acorn as embodying the full 
significance and value of the oak tree, as gauge 
the dignity and worth of conscience by the faint 
beginnings of altruistic sentiment enforced by 
the struggle for existence in primitive man. 
However relative and imperfect our moral judg- 
ments may be, there is no relativity in that voice 
within us which asserts the eternal distinction 
between right and wrong. As we reflect upon 
its universality, its tone of absoluteness, its per- 
sistency, we are more and more overwhelmed with 
the sense that we are touching one of the ulti- 
mate mysteries of human consciousness. It seems 
veritably a voice from another world, a message 
from the realm of eternal realities. It whispers 
to us of an origin and a destiny with which the 
fleeting appearances of earth are utterly incom- 
mensurate. 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 37 

Moreover, the very fact of passing a moral 
judgment involves at least an implicit knowledge 
of an absolute standard, with which we compare 
special acts to determine whether they are right 
or wrong. It is the old truth, in one of its many 
applications, that the knowledge of a limit im- 
plies a virtual transcendence of the limit. If we 
can never entirely satisfy the demand of con- 
science by any multiplication of good deeds of 
which the finite will is capable, if we can always 
conceive a higher and more complete righteous- 
ness, must this not be because we have a vision of 
the perfect, though its glory blind like the sun, 
and we can fix our gaze only on its reflected 
light? 

But the heart cannot rest content with a 
righteousness thus dimly outlined. We are ever 
seeking to render the ideal explicit, to embody 
it in concrete form. By successive moral judg- 
ments new elements of beauty are added. Every 
advance in personal holiness gives us a finer 
discernment and a clearer insight. The virtues 
which we behold in our fellows offer hints which 
we are quick to seize ; and often, quite uncon- 
sciously, we add them to the picture of that 
righteousness which we set before us as a 
goal. These individual ideals, wrought out 
to sharpness of definition by each man for 
himself, will manifestly vary according to tem- 
perament, education, moral earnestness. One 



38 A Christian Ajyologetic 

man makes a hero of Napoleon, another of 
St. Francis of Assisi. Yet among good men 
— that is, men enamoured of righteousness — 
they will ever tend more or less toward a com- 
mon type. 

Now the fact of startling import is, that Jesus 
Christ alone has come within measurable distance 
of satisfying the moral ideal of all men. If the 
qualification implied in this form of expression 
seem at first to weaken its force, let it be re- 
membered that accuracy is a more weighty factor 
in argument than rhetorical impressiveness. An 
unqualified generalisation is, in this case, incap- 
able of proof, and therefore worthless. But this 
much would seem to be above challenge — Jesus 
Christ has met perfectly the moral needs of men 
of the most various character, in every station in 
life, during all the ages since He appeared on 
earth. In His presence they have felt, not that 
they beheld certain traits which helped to make 
clearer the dim vision of the perfect righteousness 
implicit in their hearts ; rather, that in Him this 
inner standard found its one absolutely satisfying 
embodiment. So nearly universal is this ex- 
perience, that probably no one who reads these 
pages has ever known a man who would avow 
that Jesus Christ failed thus to satisfy his moral 
sense. And if we meet with an arraignment 
of the Gospel — such as Zola's, for instance, when 
he cries that the world is weary of Christian 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 39 

charity and athirst for justice — we instinctively 
feel that the impassioned protest springs from 
ignorance of what Christ really taught, and is, 
in effect, a plea for Christ, as against the travesty 
of His doctrine manifest in the lives of His pro- 
fessed disciples. For no other among the world's 
holiest can any such claim be remotely made. 
Great saints there are without number ; heroes in 
every walk of life. But, not only are they the 
first to acknowledge their own shortcomings — 
which Christ alone among holy men never 
did — but the world is quick to detect some 
flaw, and accepts them as masters in the moral 
life only within strictly defined limits and 
with grave qualifications. Surely, it is not 
extravagant to say that this solitary pre- 
eminence of Jesus Christ is, on the whole, the 
most astonishing fact in the moral history of 
the world. 

In studying the character of Christ as set 
forth in the Gospels, we should bear in mind 
that, at this point in the argument, the ques- 
tion is not raised as to the historic veracity 
of the portraiture. The Christ there depicted, 
whether legendary or historical, is the Christ 
who has won the heart of mankind, and, at 
present, it is this fact alone which engages our 
attention. 

It does, indeed, make an untold difference 
whether Jesus Christ actually lived, whether 



40 A Christian Apologetic 

the sublime beauty of His character embodied 
itself in human deeds, or is the figment of man's 
imagination. We can feel nothing but amaze- 
ment at the inconsequence of thought, when it 
is affirmed that, the Christ -idea having once 
found place in the world, it matters little 
whether the ideal has been realised or is only 
the goal toward which humanity moves. This 
attitude argues such complete absence of the 
historic sense, such utter incapacity to gauge 
the religious requirement of the human heart, 
that it may safely be ignored as the idiosyn- 
crasy of a very transient phase of philosophic 
speculation. 

But, until we clearly appreciate the full moral 
significance of the Gospel picture of the Christ, 
and of the hold which it has gained over the 
hearts of men, we are not in a position to weigh 
fairly the likelihood, as between the traditional 
and the destructive criticism of the records. In 
this lies one manifest element of weakness in 
the ordinary critical approach to the study of 
the Gospels. The vaunted absence of bias, so 
far from ensuring fairness, may be most sub- 
versive of just conclusions. The Gospels must 
be treated like any other literature, we are 
told. But what if they are essentially unlike 
any other literature ? Then, to treat them 
thus is not philosophical but the reverse. This 
is not special pleading, it is only the reasonable 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 41 

demand for a fair induction of facts upon which 
alone a truly scientific judgment can be based. 
In so far as our contention is substantiated, the 
Gospels differ from all other literature in that 
they contain the portraiture of One who has 
remoulded the moral and spiritual history of the 
world; not as Buddha and Mohammed have in- 
fluenced vast numbers of the human race, but 
by dint of sheer moral beauty and the irresistible 
persuasiveness of His message. And this sway 
has been over the most enlightened ; it has 
borne fruit in ameliorating all the conditions of 
civilised life ; and to-day it is as potent for good 
as ever, and gives no sign of being outworn or 
yielding place to another. This does not mean 
that ordinary rules of criticism are inapplicable, 
or that this literature is to be regarded as, in 
such sense sacred, that to examine its docu- 
mentary credentials savours of irreverence. But, 
to approach these books as though they were, 
in all respects, on a plane with others, would 
seem as uncritical a procedure as to account them 
magically perfect, and a priori above all cavil or 
question. 

Any effort to analyse the character of Jesus 
Christ is bound to result in a thin and cold 
abstraction as compared with the living pic- 
ture presented in the Gospel story. But the 
attempt may in some measure open our eyes to 
the abundant fulness of that portraiture, and 



42 A Christian Apologetic 

stir us to deeper admiration for the treasures 
of wisdom which it contains.^ 

The little phrase, descriptive of His work, " He 
went about doing good,**"* strikes the key-note of 
His life. Gentleness and benevolence, above all 
else, distinguish the character of Jesus Christ. 
Graciousness and sympathy are stamped on all 
His words and actions, save when He is confronted 
with hypocrisy. To meet with suffering was to 
relieve it. The poor, the sick, the wretched 
were ever the special object of His solicitude. 
There is no slightest sign of that professionally 
philanthropic spirit, touched wdth self-conscious- 
ness and condescension, which mars so often our 
best efforts at unselfishness. His benevolence was 
like the shining of the sun, the pure effluence of 
self-forgetful love, spontaneous, natural, never- 

^ Any one who puts his hand to the task will surely 
echo the words of Bushnell, after he had attempted the 
treatment of this theme. (See The Character of Jesus, 
p. 65.) "Not to say that we are dissatisfied with this 
sketch, would be almost an irreverence, of itself, to the sub- 
ject of it. Who can satisfy himself with anything that he 
can say of Jesus Christ ? We have seen, how many pictures 
of the sacred person of Jesus, by the first masters : but not 
one among them all that did not rebuke the weakness which 
could dare attempt an impossible subject. So of the char- 
acter of Jesus. It is necessary, for the holy interest of truth, 
that we should explore it as we are best able ; but what are 
human thoughts and human conceptions on a subject that 
dwarfs all thought and immediately outgrows whatever is 
conceived. And yet, for the reason that we have failed, we 
seem also to have succeeded. For, the more impossible it is 
found to be, to grasp the character and set it forth, the 
more clearly it is seen to be above our range — a miracle and 
a mystery." 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 43 

failing. The great problem of practical ethics 
is to escape the vicious circle of egotistic motive, 
to shift the spring of action from self to some 
nobler centre. We accomplish this, to a certain 
degree, within the narrow sphere of earthly 
affection. If we truly love a friend, self is for- 
gotten in the joy of fellowship and service. 
But, even here, we dignify with the name of 
love that which is stained by much of earth'^s 
passion, and is very imperfect in its loyalty and 
devotion. But, with Jesus Christ, no egotistic 
centre is, in any measure, discernible. A com- 
plete disinterestedness marks the whole of His 
relationship with men. 

^' Momentous to himself as I to me 

Hath each man been that ever woman bore ; 
Once^ in a lightning-flash of sympathy, 

\felt this truth_, an instant, and no more/' ^ 

What is for us a mountain-top of experience, 
where we breathe for one brief moment the free 
air of heaven, only to descend again to the low 
level of earth's self-interest, was to Jesus Christ 
the habitual atmosphere of all His words and 
works. And this gentle considerateness showed 
itself in those circumstances where the severest 
test is put upon character. He was perfectly 
patient and cheerful under all the common trials 
of life. What we may call passive benevolence, 

^ The Poems of William Watson, p. 38. 



44 A Christian Apologetic 

as distinguished from active deeds of kindness, 
found perfect exemplification in Him. 

Yet, with all this, there is absolutely no trace 
of unmanly softness. Indeed, such fervour of 
love, such ceaseless outflow of sustaining sym- 
pathy, were impossible save as conjoined with 
the strength and virility of the most consistent 
manhood. We have already had occasion to 
refer to that misapprehension of Christian love, 
which identifies it with alms-giving and the ener- 
vating exercise of indiscriminate mercy. In line 
with this is the onslaught of a socialistic writer, 
who exclaims : " The idea of a holy working-man 
is even grotesque. The virtues which the work- 
ing classes, at their best, have recognised have been 
rather those of integrity, generosity, sincerity, 
good comradeship, than those of meekness, purity, 
piety, self-abnegation and the Jike.*''^ In so 
far as this is aimed at the love manifested in 
the life of Jesus Christ, it misses its mark. 
That love is distinguished by just these virtues 
of integrity, generosity, sincerity, and comrade- 
ship. It is honest to the point of severity — 
witness the scathing arraignment of Scribes 
and Pharisees; or, again, the stern rebuke 
of His friends, when their spirit savoured 
not of the things which be of God. It is 
lavishly generous, even to utter self-sacrifice; 
He gave all, life itself, for His brethren. Its 
1 Quoted in Apologetics, by Alex. B. Bruce, p. 113. 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 45 

comradeship knit the little band of friends to 
their Master by every tie of tenderest human 
affection, long before their eyes were fully 
opened to the high spiritual claims which 
rendered discipleship a duty. Justice is only 
the obverse side of love; the fire, which lights 
and warms, devours with pitiless zeal. Christ, 
cleansing the temple of its traffickers with a 
scourge of small cords, was still the loving 
Christ, redeeming holy things to holy uses, lest 
the children of the Kingdom suffer detriment. 

The character of Jesus Christ is beautiful, also, 
by reason of its directness, naturalness, simplicity. 
These are always traits of true greatness. The 
small man instinctively seeks to guard himself by 
a factitious dignity; he needs the support of 
conventions and a certain amount of artificiality. 
The great man, on the contrary, is simply and 
unaffectedly himself^ and not the reflection of 
other people's notions of propriety. Therefore 
it is that greatness, rising above the passing 
fashions of the hour, is of no special time or 
place ; it has no provincial flavour ; it is native to 
the whole world. This truth finds its highest 
exemplification in Jesus Christ. The title. Son 
of Man, which He took to Himself, is alone wide 
enough to express the universalism of His char- 
acter. In His converse with men He is always 
absolutely direct, entangled by no subterfuges 
and equivocations. There is, indeed, the wisdom 



46 A Christian Apologetic 

which refuses to cast pearls before swine, the 
reticence which safeguards holy things from 
profanation. To test and strengthen faith, 
tenderness may for a moment assume the mask 
of severity, as in our Lord's dealing with the 
Syro-Phoenician woman. But there are no 
secondary motives, such as all too often render 
human intercourse tortuous and difficult. 

M. Renan would have it that there are plain 
marks of deterioration toward the close of His 
career. He asserts that the life of Jesus had 
become complicated by the over-zealous enthusi- 
asm of disciples, whose insistence that he should 
openly proclaim Himself ilessiah entailed the 
playing of a part undreamed of in the earlier and 
happier days. And thus the pure idealism of 
the Galilean ministry, turned by the force of 
circumstances into an active propaganda, hope- 
lessly entangled Him in the confusions of earth. 
The picture which this critic draws of the 
occasional roughness, the irritation, the bursts 
of impatience, the incomprehensibility, which 
characterise the Christ of the later record, is 
rhetorically effective. But, when we examine 
his references, we are puzzled to conjecture the 
authoritv on which the delineation is based. As 
Mr. Hutton well says, in commenting on this 
criticism of Kenan's : " Probably, there is no 
period in His life which is so fully penetrated 
with the divine sunlight of His tenderness as the 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 47 

period immediately before and during the last 
parting with the twelve. If tradition has any 
chronological value at all, that period — when the 
box of ointment was shed upon Him, when He 
wept over the doomed city, when He warned 
Peter of his coming fall, washed the feet of His 
disciples, told the daughters of Jerusalem not to 
weep for Him, though the cross was even then 
being set up before His eyes, but to weep for 
themselves and for their children, and finally prayed 
for forgiveness on His enemies — was not a period 
of zeal withering all human ties, and putting 
Him beyond the plane of nature, but of marvel- 
lous and surpassing love, such as could not 
possibly be matched in our accounts of the 
Galilean period. M. Renan"'s attempt to trace 
a history of gradual absorption into an idea, 
of a dizzied brain, and enthusiasm almost drying 
up the fountains of human charity, has not even 
the shadow of a foundation."*' ^ 

The serene courage of Jesus Christ in the midst 
of danger and suffering is as conspicuous as the 
gentleness and charm of His character. Courage 
is the distinguishing characteristic of the hero — 
on this we are all agreed ; but, though the virtue 
be much lauded, very crude notions are current 
as to what constitutes true courage. Some still 
cling to the traditional type, which is found 
amidst the dust and din of battle, and confound 
^ Theological Essays, by Richard H. Hutton, p. 308. 



48 A Christian Apologetic 

courage with deeds of physical daring. This is 
childish; yet perhaps few of us have shaken our- 
selves completely free from the crass associations 
which cling to the word in the popular mind. 
Insensibility often apes the outward guise of 
courage ; and, in estimating the moral worth of a 
brave deed, it is needful to give weight to the 
delicacy of organisation — the nicely-poised body 
and mind — which must be nerved by the will 
to meet the awful odds arrayed in opposition. 
Jesus Christ was of the most sensitive tempera- 
ment, open to every slightest motion of sym- 
pathy or antagonism, capable of the keenest joy 
and the intensest anguish. Sin blunts the edge 
of susceptibility — drags the body down, dulling 
its power of quick response. What, then, must 
have been the sensitiveness to joy and pain 
of One who was without sin ! If objection be 
made that we are here assuming the truth of a 
theological proposition, and that it is not proved 
that Jesus was immaculate, we must again insist 
that we are now interested only in the picture of 
the Christ as drawn in the Gospels, and are not 
at present concerned about its correspondence 
with historic fact. The character, which has won 
the hearts of men, is sinless, and His courage, as 
set forth in the Gospels, must be judged from this 
point of view. Again, courage is often fostered 
by the fact that men are blind to the full mea- 
sure of the risks incurred, be this blindness due 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 49 

to unavoidable ignorance, or to determined shut- 
ting of the eyes to danger. Jesus Christ fore- 
saw with perfect clearness the powers arrayed 
against Him, yet walked to meet His fate with 
calm and unwavering constancy. Nothing can 
surpass the majestic dignity of His action, whether 
before His judges, or when in agony on the Cross 
amidst the crowd of scoffing foes. 

But the picture of the Passion would have lost 
much of its attractive power had this been all, 
had there been no sign of that shrinking, which 
is the common heritage of all men, when the 
darkness of earth's last agony is closing in. The 
scene in the garden, the cry to the Father for 
escape, if this were possible, so far from detract- 
ing from the courage of Jesus Christ, add the 
note, which else were wanting, to prove His 
perfect manhood. Stoicism is not the highest 
kind of courage. We are powerless to fathom 
the depth of that agony. The cup from which 
He shrank was not merely the physical anguish 
of the scourging and the Cross. The mysterious 
burden of the whole world's sin and failure was 
pressing hard upon Him. The awful travail of 
Gethsemane, then, ending as it does in the 
serenity of heavenly trust and unfaltering pur- 
pose, perfects the impression of His consummate 
courage. Doubtless it was the absoluteness of 
His faith in the Father, the triumphant assur- 
ance that right reigns supreme, which sustained 

D 



50 A Christian Apologetic 

our Lord and raised Him above all earth's dis- 
quietudes. But, even though we were driven to 
doubt whether that faith can be justified, this 
would not make the resultant action less in- 
spiring ; the fruits of faith, in the character of 
Jesus Christ, would still be noble and beautiful. 

There is always tonic force in a well-grounded 
confidence, in the manful assurance that one"'s 
work is worthy and destined to issue in successful 
accomplishment. It gives the requisite uplift to 
character, without which a man can never be the 
centre of large influence and a leader among men. 
Jesus Christ had come to found a Kingdom; its 
honours and privileges were not such as make 
appeal to the carnal heart. All the powers of 
the world were arrayed against it. The means 
which lay to hand seemed totally inadequate to 
the design. Yet never once did Jesus Christ 
flinch in the face of difficulties — there could be 
no difficulties for such faith as His. The triumph 
of the Kingdom was as certain as that God rules. 
And always the light of that hope illuminates 
His face, which shines with the beauty of assured 
success. The glamour of over-confidence is quickly 
dissipated by the event ; failure brings confusion 
to lofty plans and ambitious promises. But his- 
tory has put its seal of approval on the confidence 
of Jesus Christ; and the mustard-seed of the 
parable has grown to the mighty tree prophesied, 
giving shelter to all the birds of the air. 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 51 

Thus the character of Jesus Christ, howsoever 
derived, be it the dream of men or drawn from 
actual experience, is adorned with every grace 
calculated to win our allegiance — the one per- 
fect character of which we have record. And, 
although we shall have occasion to return to it 
later, it is worth our while to notice the fact 
here, that in all respects, so far as the human 
character of Jesus Christ is concerned, there is 
perfect consistency in the four Gospels which 
profess to give account of His life. 

This statement may, at first, seem to require 
some slight modification; one or two incidents 
related have been held, by certain critics, to 
derogate from the dignity of Christ. But it is 
only necessary to name them, to see the triviality 
of the objection. The blasting of the barren 
fig-tree ceases to be wanton destruction in view 
of the awful parabolic significance pointing to 
the rejection of unfruitful Israel. And the violent 
death of the Gadarene swine, while presenting, it 
may be, greater difficulties, hardly seems to warrant 
the w eight of argument which has been laid upon 
it, when we consider that it was the price paid 
for the restored manhood of the demoniac. We 
cannot allow that the exhibitions of burning zeal, 
already adverted to— the cleansing of the Temple, 
and the denunciation of Scribes and Pharisees — fall 
under this category. Objection to these implies 
an utter failure to appreciate the importance of 



52 A Christian Apologetic 

the issues at stake, and the spiritual significance 
of the crisis. Only a weak and sentimental love 
finds no place for righteous indignation. Indeed, 
the shifts to which objectors are driven, and the 
paucity of words or acts which can remotely be 
made the subject of adverse criticism, go to prove 
the accuracy of our contention that the picture 
presented is wonderful in its harmony and con- 
sistency, that the world is right in esteeming it 
the portraiture of the Perfect Man. 

When we try to account for this unique moral 
development, and, to this end, examine the his- 
toric circumstances and antecedents of Jesus Christ, 
it becomes all the more astonishing. It is true 
that He sprang from a nation whose peculiar 
mission it was to bear witness to righteousness. 
Whatever may be the results of modern criticism 
as to the details of their history, we know that 
the Hebrews, alone among the nations of anti- 
quity, worshipped a God of righteousness, from 
the earliest dawn of national consciousness. At 
the first, the conception of righteousness was 
grievously imperfect. Israel was not exempt 
from those laws of growth which condition all 
God's dealing with men. But the highest moral 
standard known was imputed to Jehovah, and 
thus the Hebrew religion, in contrast with the 
history of other religious cults, was never out- 
grown by the advancing ethical enlightenment 
of its best minds. All such moral advancement 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 53 

was immediately assimilated by the religious 
consciousness, and served to enlarge and purify 
the teaching concerning the divine righteous- 
ness.^ Amidst all the shortcomings of Israel's 
leaders, amidst the gross corruptions of its popular 
life, a wholesome moral sentiment was always 
reasserting itself. Might we not expect, then, 
that ere long this wonderful people would produce, 
by entirely natural processes, the most striking 
moral genius of the world's history ? 

When, however, we come to compare Jesus 
Christ with the noblest of His forerunners, the 
contrast only accentuates the solitary grandeur of 
His character. We need but to mention David, 
Jeremiah, Isaiah, St. John the Baptist, to feel 
with overwhelming force that, whatever the 
splendour of their attainment, they cannot in 
any degree be placed in rivalry with Jesus Christ. 
They are distinctly national. He is universal. 
They are notable for some special virtue, or com- 
bination of virtues. He is the exponent of all 
virtue. They stir our admiration, He demands 
our love. This gulf is one that can be bridged 
by no theory of moral evolution. The perfection 
of Jesus Christ stands without earthly antece- 
dents; finite differences, as between Hebrew and 
Gentile, disappear in the presence of the infinite. 
Even His teaching does not reflect the excellence 

^ Comp. Aubrey Moore's Essay in Lux Mundi, on "The 
Christian Doctrine of God." 



54 A Christian Apologetic 

of the past. The morality of the Chosen People 
itself is transformed in His hands. The Sermon 
on the Mount is essentially new. If certain of 
its aphorisms are to be discovered in ancient 
codes, Jewish or heathen, the spirit which breathes 
through it, and the total moral outlook, are such 
as to constitute a new beginning in the religious 
history of the race. 

Strauss attempted to reconstruct the Gospel, 
along the lines of the mythical theory, by show- 
ing how each feature of the narrative is built up 
out of hints taken from the Old Testament. 
Incidents culled from the story of some national 
hero, passages from ancient prophecy, current 
apocalyptic notions, these, as offering fit material 
for a life of the Messiah, are supposed to have 
been seized upon and worked into the memoir 
by the eager activity of the myth-making imagi- 
nation. Much ingenuity was expended in elabo- 
rating this theory in prolix detail, and fitting 
the whole Gospel record into the framework of 
the earlier literature. But entirely apart from 
the quite arbitrary assumption that thus only 
can coincidences be explained, no account what- 
soever was taken of the one phenomenon which, 
above all others, calls for explanation. By no 
cleverest device can the character and teaching 
of Jesus Christ, as contained in the Gospels, be 
evolved out of a patchwork of literary quotations. 
Strauss' argument may seem formidable, with its 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 55 

apparent candour and long array of learned 
citations, until we discover that it is a virtual 
begging of the question from beginning to end. 
It owed its entire plausibility to an ignoring of 
the moral and spiritual values upon which alone 
the unique claim of the Gospel story rests. 

The originality and catholicity of Jesus Christ 
become the more conspicuous when we consider 
them with reference to the immediate environ- 
ment of His earthly life. The heroic days of 
the nation were past. The voice of prophecy 
had been silent for centuries. The decadence 
of religion was marked by the scrupulousness of 
Pharisaic observance, the hair-splitting subtleties 
of the Rabbinic schools, the worldliness and 
unbelief of the Sadducees. At no time had 
Judaism sunk to a lower ebb, if we have regard 
to the true standards of spirituality. Even the 
friends and immediate followers of Jesus, though 
we must believe them to have been chosen in part, 
at least, because of their moral and religious sus- 
ceptibility, evince again and again the narrowest 
Jewish prejudice and strange obtuseness to the 
meaning of His words. Only slowly and pain- 
fully did they assimilate the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
And not until after the Resurrection do they 
manifest any full appreciation of the greatness 
of His mission, and the revolutionary character 
of His doctrine. 

No forerunner nor contemporary can come 



56 A Christian Apologetic 

into comparison with Jesus Christ ; but we might 
expect that some among His later followers 
would equal, if they did not surpass Him, in moral 
attainment. He initiated a mighty advance ; 
showed clearly, by example, the way of holiness. 
But wisdom has accumulated with the ages. The 
vantage-ground from which later generations have 
started ought to have insured the highest achieve- 
ment. And we find that, among the saints, there 
has been no lack of ardour in following His 
footsteps. Men have toiled with ceaseless de- 
votion to reproduce His righteousness. Won- 
derful holiness ha^ been attained ; prodigies of 
self-sacrifice have been accomplished in His Name. 
Yet, ever above them all, towers the figure of 
Jesus Christ. The progress of the saints seems 
infinitesimal when compared with the distance 
which separates them from the Master whom 
they serve. 

What can be the meaning of this supreme 
height scaled at one bound ; this leadership in- 
vested with the awful majesty of the moral law 
itself; this man, Jesus Christ, offered as the goal 
toward which we are to press with tireless feet ? 
To use the word genius, as though it were a 
key to unlock the riddle, is to argue in a circle. 
It is always easy, but somewhat unprofitable, 
to choose a word of indeterminate meaning, 
and then stretch it to cover what we will. We 
have only first to insert what we afterwards 



Jesus Christ and the Moral Ideal 57 

deduce from it. There are moral laws, affecting 
the development of character, just as rigid as 
the laws which hold in the material world. 
Reason can rest satisfied with no verbal quibble, 
but must ever seek honestly to unravel the mystery 
of those laws in application to the character of 
Jesus Christ.^ 

The influence of Jesus Christ on the world has 
been commensurate with the place which has been 
assigned Him in the ethical scale. The testi- 
mony of Mr. Lecky to this point is all the more 
impressive from the fact that he cannot be charged 
with excess of sympathy with the Christian posi- 
tion. In his History of' European Morals (vol. ii. 
p. 8) he says : "It was reserved for Christianity 
to present to the world an ideal character which, 
through al] the changes of eighteen centuries, has 
filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, 
and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, 
nations, temperaments, and conditions ; has not 

1 ** Nothing has been more common in this controversy, 
whenever unbelievers are beset by difficulties, than to ascribe 
every fact connected with Jesus which cannot be accounted 
for on ordinary principles, to the influence of genius. Thus, 
in endeavouring to account for the mighty influence which 
He has exerted in history, and for the elevation of His 
teaching and character, it is found to be a ready way of 
escape from all difficulties to say that it was due to His exalted 
genius. This, however, is really equivalent to the admission 
that it has been due to a force for which we are unable to 
account, and that a power has manifested itself in Him of a 
character wholly different from those which energise in 
ordinary humanity." — C. A. Row, Christian Evidences viewed 
in relation to Modern Thought , p. 135, note. 



58 A Christian Apologetic 

only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the 
highest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so 
deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the 
simple record of three short years of active life 
has done more to regenerate and to soften man- 
kind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, 
and than all the exhortations of moralists. This 
has indeed been the well-spring of whatever has 
been best and purest in the Christian life. Amid 
all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, 
the persecution, and fanaticism which have de- 
faced the Church, it has preserved in the character 
and example of its Founder an enduring principle 
of regeneration.'^ ^ 

We cannot rest content that this moral ideal 
should stand alone, unsupported and unexplained ; 
that this unique influence of Jesus Christ should 
be simply recognised as a fact, without attempt 
to justify it to the reason. Such indifference 
were to renounce our birthright as rational beings, 
and that in a matter of crucial importance, involv- 
ing the most serious practical interests of the 
human race. 

^ Quoted by Kow in his Christian Evidences, p. 96. 



CHAPTER V 
THE DIVINE CLAIM OF CHRIST 

When we have acknowledged the unique moral 
pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, another question 
begins to force itself upon us. Is it reason- 
able to accept Him as a moral guide, and ignore 
His words the moment that they pass beyond the 
simplest admonitions concerning conduct ? Many 
are content to do this, but it is surely at the 
expense of intellectual consistency. 

The moral and spiritual are closely interwoven. 
If any vision of divine things be possible, right- 
eousness must clarify the eye for beholding it. 
This fact plainly raises a presumption in favour 
of any religious message which Jesus Christ may 
utter, a presumption strong enough to induce us 
to ponder carefully whatever He may say con- 
cerning God and His relation to men. If there 
be an antecedent probability that God will reveal 
Himself, where should we look for the clearest 
revelation if not to that meeting-point of heaven 
and earth, the loftiest righteousness of which we 
have record in history ? 

To reason thus is certainly to pass beyond the 

59 



60 A Christian Apologetic 

limits of the inductive method, and therefore the 
argument is not put forward as having weight, 
save as facts are found which unmistakably sub- 
stantiate it. But even the most exclusive advocate 
of induction may grant this reasoning a place 
among those guesses which not infrequently guide 
us toward lines of fruitful experiment. Our 
attention is legitimately aroused, and we feel 
bound to examine with minutest care all the 
phenomena allied w ith that exhibition of supreme 
virtue which we have discovered in the life and 
character of Jesus Christ. If, as a result of such 
examination, it be found that Christ Himself 
grounded His authority in a unique relationship 
with the Father; if it appear that the ethical 
and religious elements of His teaching cannot be 
divorced without seriously impairing the integrity 
of His whole message ; this will have advanced us 
to a new stage in the argument, and a choice of 
singular importance and difficulty will have been 
forced on us. 

It cannot be denied, however, that curiously 
strong prejudices are arrayed against even a fair- 
minded consideration of the divine claim of Jesus 
Christ. To state the thesis is often to arouse 
irreconcilable antagonism. It is not so much a 
question of securing candid examination of the 
evidence as of winning a respectful hearing. By 
many this hostile attitude is frankly avowed. In 
other cases it takes the form of a silent, undefined 



The Divine Claim of Christ 61 

antipathy, sapping the enthusiasm of whole- 
hearted devotion among those who are nominally 
loyal disciples. To such the question of the 
divinity of Christ is one which they instinctively 
avoid, even in their own thoughts. They prefer 
to leave it in abeyance, trusting that it is enough 
vaguely to accept Him as Master, without defin- 
ing the exact limits of His authority. 

This sentiment, which is undoubtedly wide- 
spread and influential, has its source in a pre- 
dominantly deistic conception of the universe. 
Deism is out of court as a philosophical theory. 
It approves itself as little to the naturalistic as 
to the metaphysical mind. But, however little it 
can bear the test of close thinking, its underlying 
principles prevail widely, and determine, to a 
great extent, men's practical attitude toward God. 
It must ever remain easier to grasp the thought 
of a mechanical relation between God and the 
world than to rise to the apprehension of a 
vital relationship. God as an artificer, moulding 
matter into the wondrous forms of creation; 
governing externally, through the medium of 
laws of His appointment ; standing over against 
man as Ruler and Judge, as Father, if you will, 
but only in the restricted sense that mercy and 
love are among His attributes ; this is a concep- 
tion which attracts by its seeming clearness, how- 
ever fraught with difficulties if subjected to any 
searching metaphysical analysis. God and man, 



62 A Christian Apologetic 

as thus viewed, are totally distinct entities, with 
superficial kinship only. The image of God, in 
which man was created, can mean nothing more 
than a faint resemblance to the divine, mysteri- 
ously impressed on human thought and will. We 
are God's children, figuratively, in that He treats 
us with something of paternal consideration ; but, 
that there is such congruity between His nature 
and ours, that the human and the divine are capable 
of essential union, must be regarded as utterly im- 
possible. The man-becoming of God is intrinsically 
absurd ; for God and man are mutually exclusive 
terms, in such sense, that were Christ divine He 
could not be human, while the assertion that 
He is man negatives the possibility that He 
is God. 

It may be difficult to formulate the opposing 
view so as to escape the appearance of an undue 
emphasis upon the immediacy of God's presence, 
which lays itself open to the charge of pantheism. 
It is the function of faith to fuse the seeming 
contradiction of God's transcendence and His 
immanence ; it is doubtful whether the intellect 
alone is competent to the task. But against this 
arbitrary divorce between the divine and the 
human, this separateness of creation which tends 
to reduce God to an abstraction, all the profounder 
thought of the world raises a voice of protest. 
To yield assent to it is not only to cast scorn upon 
the deepest insight of philosopher and poet, but 



The Divine Claim of Christ 63 

to do despite to the imperative demands of the 
religious consciousness of mankind. 

Can it be that, at times, a deep moral distaste 
reinforces this deistic tendency of the intellect ? 
There is awfulness in the thought ; but it is con- 
ceivable that it should be pleasanter, as well as 
easier, to banish God to a distant heaven, rather 
than to believe that He has invaded the intimacies 
of earth. Man is flattered by a sense of exclusive 
possession ; he would lay claim, at least, to the 
ownership of this little planet, reserve one tiny 
plot from the disturbing intrusion of the divine. 
It lends an almost terrible sacredness to common 
things if God has indeed dwelt as man among 
men. This human nature of ours, thus dignified, 
must needs be treated with an exceeding reverence. 
Life can no longer be regarded as the easy-going 
venture which men of relaxed moral fibre find 
most in accord with their desires. Men will not 
believe, because belief involves the abandonment 
of that attitude of moral indifflerence which consists 
most naturally with the full enjoyment of purely 
earthly compensations. The individual may be 
quite unconscious of the moral bearing of this 
deep-seated antagonism to the divine claim of 
Christ ; it may show itself merely as an instinctive 
repugnance, and seem to spring solely from in- 
tellectual causes. But, in view of the bitter 
animosity aroused by Christ, both during His 
earthly life and again and again in after-history. 



64 A Christian Apologetic 

it does not seem possible to deny that there is 
such a thing as a hatred of the light.^ 

To meet these demands to be freed from the 
burden of acknowledging Christ as divine, a 
theory has been proposed which claims to account, 
on purely natural grounds, for the phenomena 
exhibited in the Gospels. Jesus was possessed, 
we are told, of a rare and penetrating spiritual 
genius. Such was the fascination of His person- 
ality that legends quickly gathered round Him 
when once He had passed from earth. The 
enthusiastic love of His disciples endowed Him 
with superhuman powers and attributes. When 
we add to this that the Messianic idea, which 
prevailed among the Jews at the time, had been 
gathering definiteness for centuries, and that the 
characteristic traits of the traditional Messiah lay 
ready at hand to be applied to Jesus the moment 
that His followers became convinced that He was 
the long-expected Redeemer of Israel, we are 
supposed to have all the data requisite for the 
explanation of the divine character attributed to 
Him in the Gospel story. Thus, the Christ of 
Scripture tradition is essentially a mythical figure, 
behind which lies the historic Jesus ; but we can 
know little with certainty concerning the latter, 
save the negative proposition, that He was not 
divine. 

1 Comp. J. B. Mozley's essay on Blanco White in Essays 
Historical and Theological. 



The Divine Claim of Christ 65 

The growth of myths is a subject requiring 
great delicacy and acumen in the handling, if we 
are to arrive at conclusions which are more than 
the subjective impressions of the individual in- 
vestigator. The fact that myths develop under 
certain conditions is indubitable, but the genesis 
and method of that development are elusive when 
we try to formulate a definite theory. It is not 
enough simply to utter the word " my thical,**** 
and fancy that thereby we have satisfactorily 
explained a wide-spread belief and proved that 
it has no claim whatsoever on our credence. 
Amidst much that is uncertain one thing seems 
plain, a myth must require a considerable length 
of time before it can so enwrap the nucleus of 
historic fact as totally to obscure its original 
features. Now, without discussing here the 
probable date of the Four Gospels, we have 
testimony concerning Jesus Christ which all 
critics agree in dating within thirty years of the 
Crucifixion, namely, the four unquestioned Epistles 
of St. Paul, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and 
Romans. The picture of the Christ contained 
in these Epistles is drawn incidentally, but this 
fact renders it more rather than less significant. 
And, when we examine that picture, we find 
it completely consonant with the divine-human 
Christ of the Gospel story. St. PauFs testi- 
mony has many and important consequences; 
but, at this point, we use it merely as fixing a 

E 



66 A Christian Apologetic 

limit to the period in which the assumed mythical 
conception of the Christ must have been developed. 
This period was that in which most of the per- 
sonal friends and followers of Jesus were still 
alive, and we must suppose that the very men 
who had known Him most intimately in the 
daily converse of His earthly life were among the 
active agents in the propagation of a mythical 
conception of His Person. This certainly puts 
a great strain on the theory, and we are obliged 
to credit the founders of the Church, who appear 
to have been men of unusual practical ability 
and intelligence in other respects, with an extra- 
ordinary credulity in this one matter of crucial 
importance. 

Strauss met this argument with the following 
plea: "A frequently raised objection remains, 
. . . namely, that the space of about thirty 
years, from the death of Jesus to the destruction 
of Jerusalem, during which the greater part of 
the narratives must have been formed ; or even 
the interval extending to the beginning of the 
second century, the most distant period which 
can be allowed for the origin of even the latest 
of these Gospel narratives and for the written 
composition of our Gospels ; — is much too short 
to admit of the rise of so rich a collection of 
myths. But, as we have shown, the greater part 
of these myths did not arise during that period, 
for their first foundation was laid in the legends 



The Divine Claim of Christ 67 

of the Old Testament, before and after the 
Babylonish exile; and the transference of these 
legends, with suitable modifications, to the ex- 
pected Messiah, was made in the course of the 
centuries which elapsed between that exile and 
the time of Jesus. So that, for the period between 
the formation of the first Christian community 
and the writing of the Gospels, there remains to 
be effected only the transference of Messianic 
legends, almost all ready formed, to Jesus, 
with some alterations to adapt them to Christian 
opinions, and to the individual character and 
circumstances of Jesus; only a very small pro- 
portion of myths having to be formed entirely 
new." ^ But is not this explanation an evasion of 
the central difficulty ? It may, by possibility, be 
held as covering such stories as those given by 
St. Matthew and St. Luke, concerning the birth 
and early years of our Lord. But it does not 
account for the divine self-assertion which is 
consistently attributed to Jesus Christ through- 
out the Gospels; nor has the argument any 
bearing on the Resurrection^ the myth, according 
to this theory, which above all others needs to be 
accounted for. 

Moreover, we must not overlook the fact 

that Incarnation was an essentially new concept 

in the world. There had been foreshado wings 

in the theophanies and deifications which abound 

1 Strauss' Life of Jems, Eng. trans., p. 86. 



68 A Christian Apologetic 

in ethnic religions, especially in those of an 
Oriental type. But the man- becoming of God, 
in the sense in which the Church has under- 
stood the revelation of God in Christ, was new 
in religious thought.^ The strict and jealous 
monotheism of the Jews was seemingly the most 
uncongenial soil in which any such conception 
could arise. It is more than doubtful whether 
the picture of the Messiah contained in the 
prophets, or that current in the popular imagina- 
tion, can be said to have anticipated this feature 
of Christian doctrine. There must have been 
some adequate cause for so startlingly para- 
doxical a development. It will be denied by 
many that the doctrine of Incarnation, as de- 
veloped in later theology, is contained in the 
original records. But the Church claims that it 
is the legitimate unfolding of that which lies 
implicit in the direct assertions of Jesus Christ 
concerning Himself, and in the Christology of St. 
Paul. An advance along such absolutely new 
theological lines, so complete a remoulding of the 
metaphysical basis of monotheism, which has also 
held its own, and been reaffirmed rather than 
discredited by subsequent philosophic thought, is, 
to say the least, one of the most striking achieve- 
ments of the human mind. It is by no means 
evident that man's myth-making propensity is 
equal to such an effort. And it seems less 
^ See Dorner's Person of Christy Introduction, 



The Divine Claim of Christ 69 

reasonable to regard this doctrine as a baseless 
speculation, spun out of the stores of human 
ingenuity, than to acknowledge that it was de- 
rived from elements in the character of Jesus 
which point plainly to His being more than 
man.i 

The rock on which the mythical theory, in its 
various forms, ultimately wrecks itself is the 
attempt to find in history the hypothetical human 
Christ, stripped of the divine attributes with 
which He is invested in the Gospels. Whatever 
may be the trustworthiness of the New Testament 
records, they are our only source of information 
concerning the life and character of Jesus Christ. 
If we find that the picture there presented is an 
indissoluble unity; that, abstracting all that 
savours of the supernatural, we have but a dim 
and shadowy figure left, without clearness of 
outline, or force and consistency of character — 
then it will be plain that we must accept all or 
abandon all. That method is more nearly allied 
to romance than criticism which rejects what it 
dislikes, and then reconstructs out of the inner 
consciousness a Christ to suit its own predilec- 
tions, and offers this to the world as substitute 
for Him who has won all the victories of the 
Christian ages. In view of the intellectual ability 

^ For a Unitarian statement of the implications of the 
divine self-assertion of Christ, hardly to be distinguished 
from the orthodox view of His Person, see Sear's, The 
Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christy Part IV., chap. ii. 



70 A Christian Apologetic 

and the honesty of many who are open to this 
charge, we may hesitate to impute critical in- 
consequence. But it is possible for the humblest 
to study the picture of Jesus Christ in the 
Gospels, and decide whether or not it exhibits a 
unity that welds together the divine and human 
elements in such manner that to sever them 
is to destroy the only Christ whom we can 
know. 

Again, if the contention were well founded 
that the Messianic claim was foisted upon Christ 
by the enthusiasm of His disciples, or the wonder- 
loving imagination of a later generation, we should 
expect that some trace of imperfect workmanship 
would be discernible in the picture which is drawn 
of Him in the Gospels. It might well task the 
mightiest genius to produce, in the region of 
pure romance, a figure which should successfully 
combine the opposing characteristics of utter 
self-abnegation and supreme self-assertion. But 
what shall we say of the difficulties when the 
self-assertion is to be superimposed upon a 
character which, according to this hypothesis, 
must have been most antithetic to all such 
blunders of an overweening pride.? The Evan- 
gelists, at whatever time they wrote, are free from 
all literary sophistication ; at least, this is mani- 
festly true of the Synoptists. The narrative, in 
their pages, bears the unmistakable signs of good 
faith. Might we not look, then — if, indeed, two 



The Divine Claim of Christ 71 

incompatible elements entered into the tradition 
— for occasional evidences of the latent opposi- 
tion; inconsistencies in the words and acts of 
Jesus; an impression of complexity, as though 
the character were woven of materials not 
always homogeneous? But the reverse is the 
case. We find in Him simplicity and an ab- 
sence of egotism, combined with the most 
astonishing self-assertion. Here is an ethical 
marvel which confounds all previous theories 
as to the possibilities of human nature. Never 
man spake as this Man, claiming all authority 
in heaven and earth; yet when words fall from 
His lips, which, in another, would be proof of 
inexcusable audacity, we feel that it is the same 
lowly Jesus who is among men as one that serves. 
No slightest sense of incongruity disquiets us. In 
His humblest acts He is Lord of all; in the 
most majestic we are awed by His humility. 

We have but to turn to our own experience to 
realise how unparalleled is the moral problem 
which here confronts us. There may be times 
when duty calls us to self-assertion, when we 
feel obliged to lay emphasis on our rights and 
to demand submission. But on these occasions 
how difficult it is to preserve, in any measure, 
the finer qualities of meekness and self-forget- 
fulness. The necessity forced upon us threatens 
our higher spiritual interests, and, should this 
temper become habitual, we know that nothing 



72 A Christian Apologetic 

could save us from moral deterioration. But 
in Christ there is no conflict ; the moods do not 
alternate, but each interpenetrates the other. 
The humility and the self-assertion are both, 
at all times, integral to the inmost character. 

In this connection it is impossible to omit 
all reference to the mighty works which are re- 
corded as having been wrought by Jesus Christ. 
They stand in close relation to His divine 
claim, and fall under the same critical strictures 
as the words in which He set forth His Messianic 
authority and mission. We do not now ask 
whether the miracles are intrinsically credible; 
we take them merely as forming a part of the 
Gospel story. And, in this view, it cannot be 
denied that they are surprisingly in harmony with 
the general presentation of our Lord's character 
and work. We do not propose to rest any weight 
whatever, at this point, on the evidential value of 
miracles. We are at present studying the Christ as 
He is represented in the Gospels, without raising 
the question of their historical accuracy. Our only 
claim is that the world has found the character 
of Christ beautiful with all moral perfections. 
This character, in the only form in which it can 
be known by us, combines with its humility and 
gentleness astonishing traces of divine prerogative 
and authority. The combination is eflfected in 
such manner that it leaves on the mind no sense 
of incongruity; the whole picture is harmonious 



The Divine Claim of Christ 73 

and convincing. Having advanced thus far, 
there is ample warrant, in the pursuance of 
the inductive method, for examining the miracles 
as recorded facts, with the purpose of ascertaining 
whether or not they are congruous with what we 
have already discovered in the Gospel picture of 
Jesus Christ. 

In any such examination we are immediately 
impressed by the ethical quality of these 
miracles. For the most part they are connected 
with deeds of mercy, and in all cases they are 
worthy of the dignity of Him who is said to 
have worked them. It is further remarkable 
that they are never performed in His own behalf. 
There is a striking absence of the puerility and 
inconsequence of similar narratives, appearing 
for instance, in the Apocryphal Gospels. This 
contrast has been emphasised so often that it 
is needless to particularise; but the triteness of 
the illustration should not blind us to the ex- 
traordinary impressiveness of the fact. The 
Gospel miracles fall as naturally into their place 
in the narrative, as do the parables or the 
ordinary words and acts of Jesus. They are 
perfectly in accord with what we should expect 
Him to do, if once it be granted that such events 
are in themselves conceivable. 

It is hardly necessary to say that all this does 
not prove that the record is accurate. What 
it does prove, however, is that some very re- 



74 A Christian Apologetic 

markable influence must have prevailed, so to 
guide and restrain the compilers of the Gospels, 
that their work should be thus differentiated 
from all other literature which deals with the 
miraculous. Once again, we are struck with the 
consistency of the portraiture. What exceeding 
subtlety of touch is this, which can bring the 
figure of Jesus Christ, in all its moral grandeur, 
into close relation with deeds which we commonly 
associate with the false pretences of magic, and 
still rouse within us no protest, nor sully the 
immaculate purity of His character ! 

We find, moreover, that Jesus alone, in the 
New Testament, is represented as performing 
miracles in His own name. Others call upon 
God, or perform them in the name of Jesus; 
He commands, and the powers of nature are 
obedient to His dictate. Even where, as in the 
raising of Lazarus, there is mention of a prayer 
of thanksgiving to the Father, when the cry, 
"Lazarus, come forth,"*^ awakes the dead, it is 
the voice of divine authority which alone is 
heard. Whether the traditions upon which the 
Evangelists construct their narrative be histori- 
cally trustworthy or not, they are in all these 
particulars absolutely consistent. This is cer- 
tainly not the usual characteristic of the un- 
restrained workings of popular fancy. The fact 
is noteworthy in itself, and becomes all the more 
significant when taken in connection with the 



The Divine Claim of Christ 75 

other phenomena of the Gospels upon which we 
have been dwelling. 

The unity of the character of Jesus Christ, 
before and after the Resurrection, deserves more 
attention than has usually been bestowed upon 
it. We might naturally have expected, if the 
story of the Resurrection were mythical, that 
prodigies of power, reflected splendours of the 
heavenly triumph, would obscure in some degree 
the merely human features of His character. 
Here surely was opportunity for extravagant 
embellishment, if the writers were the credulous 
slaves of a popular superstition. It is true that 
the risen Christ appears in the Gospels, superior 
to some of the limitations incident to the natural 
body. He manifests Himself to His disciples, 
mysteriously indififerent to physical barriers, and 
seems at will to veil their eyes so that they may 
see yet not know Him. But the moment that 
He opens His lips, the words which fall from 
them are exactly such as have always charac- 
terised His discourse — full of simplicity and 
loving sympathy with the aifairs of men. There 
is no new revelation concerning the mysteries 
of the future, no message to satisfy curiosity, 
no assumption of new powers and authority. 
There is, if possible, a touch of added tenderness 
apparent. The tone in which He utters her 
name reveals Him to Mary at the sepulchre ; 
the threefold question to St. Peter, lingering 



76 A Christian Apologetic 

longingly over the assurance of his fealty and 
devotion ; the benediction of peace with which 
He greets the assembled disciples ; the almost 
wistful tone of wonder wherewith He upbraids 
the two disciples on the way to Emmaus for 
their slowness of heart ; the gentleness of rebuke 
implied in yielding to the weakness of St. Thomas'* 
faith, and offering the physical proof which he 
demanded ; these are but illustrations of the ex- 
quisite naturalness that marks the history of the 
Resurrection life, bringing it into harmony with the 
character displayed throughout the entire ministry. 
It may seem to some that these descriptive 
touches are very inadequate, in view of the 
celestial enlightenment which might well be de- 
manded from one who has risen from the dead. 
The Scripture, indeed, asserts that He instructed 
His disciples in matters pertaining to the 
Kingdom, which are not further specified. And 
this instruction was doubtless their guide in 
the accomplishment of their later work. But 
the point of interest, which now engages us, is 
that such reserve should distinguish the account. 
For, according to the thesis of unbelief, the whole 
realm of fancy was open to the compilers, whence 
they might have drawn such material as would 
best suit man's unbridled curiosity and his in- 
satiate thirst for wonders. Christian tradition 
has, moreover, always laid stress on what Christ 
was and did, as the foundation of the Church's 



The Divine Claim of Christ 77 

hope, quite as much as upon His explicit teaching. 
And this goes far to explain the paucity of the 
post-resurrection discourses of our Lord in the 
New Testament. 

It remains for us to examine, with somewhat 
greater care, a few of the recorded instances of 
Chrisfs claim to divine authority. It is a mis- 
take to suppose that this aspect of our Lord's 
character is mainly dependent for illustration on 
the proof- texts commonly quoted. It is rather 
the underlying tone of all His words, the atmos- 
phere pervading all His works, which carry con- 
viction. 

The wonderful summary of Chrisfs moral teach- 
ing, given in St. Matthew's Gospel (chaps, v.-vii.), 
is often esteemed common ground on which those 
who accept and those who deny the supernatural 
claim of the Gospel can meet. It may be 
doubted whether the unstinted admiration, lav- 
ished by unbelievers on this utterance of Jesus 
Christ, would survive a more painstaking study. 
The code of ethics there enunciated is rather 
revolutionary, even after nineteen hundred years 
of professed allegiance ; and it is almost as hard 
to formulate a theoretical justification of the pre- 
cepts on naturalistic grounds, as it is practically 
to fulfil them. But, viewed historically, with 
due appreciation of the circumstances of their 
first utterance, the words are a startling revela- 
tion of the personal claim put forward by Christ. 



78 A Christian Apologetic 

Bear in mind the sacredness of the law of Moses, 
the absoluteness of authority possessed by every 
trivial precept which could boast his sanction, 
and then listen to the uncompromising " I say 
unto you,'*' whereby He abrogated the traditional 
standard which held undisputed sway.^ To find a 
parallel to the claim of Christ, it would be neces- 
sary to conceive of a moral teacher to-day, who 
should boldly set himself against the highest 
known standard of contemporary ethics ; who 
should announce, as a dictum beyond appeal, 
his own intuition of righteousness, basing his 
claim on no other argument than an unqualified 
statement of his individual authority. We need 
hardly ask what measure of respect would be 
meted out to such presumption. Yet this is 
exactly the tone assumed by Jesus Christ in 
His initial discourse on the fundamental prin- 

^ St. Matt. V. 17-20 might seem inconsistent with this 
unqualified statement. The composite character of the 
whole discourse, as we find it in St. Matthew, has led some to 
conclude that we have here an instance of two conflicting 
lines of tradition. But it is hardly necessary to have 
recourse to this hypothesis in order to explain the apparent 
discrepancy. The fulfilment of the law, as apprehended by 
Jesus Christ, was in itself of such a character as to seem to 
the Jews utterly subversive of their traditional righteous- 
ness. In verse 19 it is plainly *' the moral laxity which seeks 
to evade an acknowledged duty " that Christ condemns. 
And verse 20 puts the seal of His condemnation on the 
highest ideal of righteousness prevalent amoug His hearers. 
We know, moreover, that Christ recognised a degree of 
accommodation in Mosaic ordinances, which allowed of a 
restatement scarcely to be distinguished from abrogation. 
(Comp. St. Matt. xix. 7/.) 



The Divine Claim of Christ 79 

ciples of His Kingdom. If we are no longer 
startled by the novelty of His doctrine, this may 
be due in part to the fact, that wont and usage 
have dulled our ears to His words. But famili- 
arity should not veil from us the originality of 
a Teacher who dealt with the moral law as its 
master, promulgating decrees with the authorita- 
tiveness of Jehovah on Mount Sinai. 

As Jesus Christ wrought miracles in His own 
name; as He assumed a position of unique autho- 
rity with regard to the law; so He made it 
plain that His relation to the Father is to be 
clearly distinguished from that of all others. 
Jesus Christ came to proclaim the Father- 
hood of God. This truth, which had been 
dimly guessed and falteringly uttered, received 
in Him a sanction which has made it the good 
news of God to men. We are God's sons, even 
when wandering in a far country, hungering for 
the husks which the swine eat. The tenderest 
solicitude in the heart of the Eternal God 
yearns over us, eager to welcome us with a 
Father"*s abounding joy, if we will but turn our 
faces homeward . Jesus Christ prefaces the prayer 
given to His disciples with " Our Father,"' and 
thereby bids men recognise the bond of brother- 
hood, binding them together in one family. Yet 
invariably, in the Gospels, when speaking of God 
in relation to Himself, He names Him " My 
Father,'' never "Our Father." There could be 



80 A Christian Apologetic 

no fuller fellowship with men than that realised 
in Jesus Christ. He calls them not servants but 
friends; they are His brethren, even when most 
degraded and erring. Yet there ever remains 
the sharp line of demarcation. His sonship is 
not perfectly shared by us. There is a unique 
relationship between Him and the Father, into 
which no created being can intrude. Even the 
passage which has been wrested to a denial of 
Christ's divinity, where He explicitly says, "My 
Father is greater than I,'' ^ would seem rather to 
accentuate the distinction than to obliterate it. 
Who can this be, that feels it incumbent upon 
Himself to assert that God's greatness surpasses 
His own ? Can we conceive of arrogance ap- 
proaching to this, that a mere man should make 
the declaration ? Yet the words seem natural on 
the lips of Jesus Christ. Whatever mystery of sub- 
ordination, in the essence of the Godhead or in the 
economy of salvation, they may imply, they either 
raise Him who uttered them entirely above the 
level of ordinary humanity, or they stamp Him 
with an egotism intolerably absurd in its self- 
appreciation. 

Such being the atmosphere of all Christ's 
words and works, we are no longer surprised to 
hear Him call men to Himself as the fount 
of consolation and refreshment : " Come unto 
Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
1 St. John xiv. 28. 



The Divine Claim of Christ 81 

and I will give you rest/'^ ''In the last day, 
that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and 
cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come 
unto Me and drink. ""^ Whether these words, 
which have proved themselves among the most 
precious of Gospel promises to weary men, would 
not savour of presumption akin to blasphemy, 
if Jesus Christ were mere man, is a question 
that has not always been pressed with the in- 
sistence which logical clearness demands. Here, 
as so often, the heart has been truer in its instinct 
than the head; and witness has been borne to 
the divine claim of Christ by some who with 
their lips have denied it. 

The Fourth Gospel abounds in sayings which 
assert that Christ, in His own Person, fully 
meets the spiritual needs of men : " As the 
Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth 
them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He 
will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath 
committed all judgment unto the Son: that 
all men should honour the Son even as they 
honour the Father.*" " I am the living bread 
which came down from heaven : if any man 
eat of this bread he shall live for ever."" "I 
am the resurrection and the life : he that be- 
lieveth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
Me shall never die.'' "I am the light of the 
^ St. Matt. xi. 28. 2 g^^ j^hn vii. 37. 

F 



82 A Christian Apologetic 

world : he that followeth Me shall not walk in 
darkness, but shall have the light of life." " It 
is expedient for you that I go away; for if I 
go not away, the Comforter will not come unto 
you ; but if I depart I will send Him unto you."" ^ 

These instances appeal with less force to 
many, because of the doubts that have been 
cast on the authenticity of this Gospel. More- 
over, it is perfectly consistent with a belief in 
its Johannine authorship, to acknowledge that 
it is marked by a more deliberate literary purpose, 
and a clearer theological aim, than is the case 
with the Synoptics. The fundamental concep- 
tions that dominate the mind of the author; 
the antithesis between light and darkness; be- 
tween the kingdom of this world, which is the 
special sphere of the evil one, and that kingdom 
which cometh from above; between love that 
is life, and death that rules in the carnal heart ; 
these undoubtedly colour the phraseology of the 
discourses of Jesus, as well as the comments of 
the Evangelist himself. But this is far from 
an admission that the Christ of the Fourth 
Gospel differs, in any material degree, from Him 
whom the Synoptists portray. The background of 
tradition, common to all four Evangelists, every- 
where implies a unique claim to divine authority 
on the part of Jesus Christ. And, indeed, it is 
not necessary to go beyond the first Evangelist 

1 St. John V. 21-23; vi. 51 ; xi. 25, 26; viii. 12; xvi. 7. 



The Divine Claim of Christ 83 

to find passages which are as strong in their 
assertion of divinity as any contained in the pages 
of St. John. Let us take three which stand out 
with special prominence. 

In St. Matt. xi. 27, in close connection 
with a prayer of thanksgiving to the Father, 
Jesus says : ^' All things are delivered unto Me 
of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son 
but the Father; neither knoweth any man the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
the Son will reveal Him."*' These words dis- 
tinctly affirm an exclusive knowledge of God, 
which does not comport with any attainment 
possible to mere humanity. And moreover, the 
function of revealing this knowledge to men be- 
longs primarily to Him alone. 

St. Matt. XXV. contains a picture of the 
Judgment, in which the Son of Man is repre- 
sented as coming in glory with all the holy 
angels. As king He sits on the throne, and 
separates between the nations, as a shepherd 
divides his sheep from the goats. The standard 
of judgment is determined solely by the relation 
of men to Himself. As they have treated Him, 
so are they inheritors of the Kingdom or banished 
among the cursed. Again we must ask — Who is 
this that usurps the prerogatives of God Almighty, 
and proclaims Himself supreme judge ? Who, 
but God, is competent to the task of dividing 
eternally between the righteous and the wicked. 



84 A Christian Ajwlogetic 

apportioning their award as they have been loyal 
or disloyal to Himself? 

In St. Matt, xxviii. 19, our Lord commands 
the Apostles to go forth preaching, and baptizing 
all nations in the Name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. These words have 
from time immemorial been connected with the 
Church's most solemn initiatory rite, and from 
them was elaborated the earliest doctrinal state- 
ment of her creed. We can hardly deny that 
the baptismal commission formed a part of the 
primitive tradition of Christ's teaching.^ But it 
is in this formula of baptism that the self-asser- 
tion of Jesus reaches its climax. That any mere 
man should join his name with that of the 
Father, on a footing of equality, is inconceiv- 
able, unless his reason were deranged and egotism 
had lapsed into madness. 

Plainly, the Gospels know nothing of a man 
Jesus, supremely good and wise in things per- 
taining to the spirit, but avoiding all semblance 
of authority save that which belongs to trans- 
cendent human righteousness. If the Fourth 
Gospel represents Jesus as habitually emphasising 

^ It is claimed by certain critics that the primitive mode 
of baptism was simply in " the Name of the Lord Jesus," 
and that no trace of the longer formula is found earlier than 
the middle of the second century, if we except this passage 
in St. Matthew. This is a very doubtful thesis to maintain. 
But as at present we are only seeking to discern clearly the 
picture of Jesus presented in the Gospels as we possess them, 
the critical question does not here affect the argument. 



The Divine Claim of Christ 85 

His eternal relationship with the Father, and 
puts into His mouth a clear statement of the 
glory which He shared with God before the 
foundation of the world, it is none the less true 
that the same divine claim is unmistakably im- 
plied in the picture of His character as drawn 
by the Synoptists. And this brings us face to 
face with a dilemma, which it is cowardice to 
shirk. 

To assume that Jesus made no such claim, but 
that it was foisted upon Him by the mistaken 
enthusiasm of His followers, is in the highest 
degree uncritical. It is easy to see why this 
course should be taken by those who a priori 
deny the possibility of Incarnation. If Jesus 
Himself were guilty of so gross a blunder. His 
character as a spiritual guide would be seriously 
discredited. Meanwhile, one shrinks from rob- 
bing the world of its highest ideal of goodness. 
It is hard to shake off the reverend associations 
which enshrine the name of Jesus Christ. One 
would fain preserve the moral impetus of His 
example, which has for ages urged men on to 
heights of holiness. But the excellence of the 
sentiment, underlying this theory of later accre- 
tions, does not suffice to rehabilitate it as sound 
criticism. Our only source of information con- 
cerning the man Jesus Christ makes Him divine, 
and that in such fashion that all His words and 
acts are coloured by the consciousness of a 



86 A Christian Apologetic 

supreme spiritual authority. To try to rend 
apart the human and the divine, and reconstruct 
a hypothetical Christ which shall satisfy the 
requirements of a purely naturalistic philosophy, 
is to leave each man to follow the dictates of his 
own fancy. The Christ of history is replaced by 
a subjective notion of what the perfect man is 
likely to be. But, in truth, it is beyond all 
bounds of probability that a fact, like the divine 
claim of Christ, so closely and consistently inter- 
woven with the whole texture of His character, 
should be due to nothing but the prejudice and 
the mistakes of His biographers. It is far more 
natural to suppose that the unvarying tradition 
is based on some foundation of reality. 

In this case, if Christ indeed asserted that 
He was the Son of God, and we still refuse to 
allow the possibility of such a revelation of the 
divine, two alternatives remain. Either He was 
a deliberate deceiver, or else He was self-deceived. 
The former would probably be maintained by 
no one. But if He was self-deceived, in a matter 
of such supreme spiritual import, can we longer 
have implicit faith in His moral teaching? 
Such overweening self-confidence must prove 
that He was lacking in the first elements of a 
sane and balanced judgment. There would be, 
then, nothing left us but to account Him one 
among the many religious teachers, whose systems, 
amidst much that is imperfect, yet refract some 



The Divine Claim of Christ 87 

scattered rays of truth. But this conclusion is 
rendered impossible by another at which we have 
already arrived. There is that, in the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ, which marks it off from all other re- 
ligious systems — a moral perfection which stamps 
it with finality. Not only is this the verdict of 
history, but the individual conscience bears testi- 
mony to the unique influence of Jesus Christ. In- 
disputable facts, then, refute the hypothesis of a 
Christ, whose moral and spiritual judgment was 
so beclouded that He erroneously laid claim to 
divine prerogatives. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST 

Ix the records of the New Testament, and in 
the unbroken tradition of the Church, the divine 
claim of Jesus Christ stands in closest relation 
with His rising again from the dead. The 
Resurrection sets the final seal on His mission, 
accrediting His words and His works as the 
revelation of God. Plainly, we here pass beyond 
the possibility of appeal to the moral intuitions. 
If religion is to rest, in any measure, on his- 
torical facts — if revelation is to be authenticated 
by events that happened at a certain time and 
place — we are driven to apply those critical 
methods by which alone, in such cases, the credi- 
bility of human testimony can be established. 

But straightway, the whole inquiry is com- 
plicated by a blank denial, on the part of many, 
that the event to be investigated could, under 
any circumstances, have taken place. This denial 
entrenches itself on scientific ground. The 
uniformity of nature cannot be invaded, and a 
miracle, therefore, is merely a contradiction in 
terms. It is a mistake, however, to suppose 

88 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 89 

that the objection always presents itself under 
a purely scientific guise. Subtle movements of 
thought, having little outward semblance to 
naturalism, make strongly in the same direction. 
Questions are frequently raised as to the very 
nature of revelation ; and whether, in strictness, 
its province must not be confined to the activity 
of those moral and spiritual instincts which are 
universal in the heart of man. Dr. Martineau 
draws a distinction between what he is pleased 
to term apocalyptic and revealed religion, and 
maintains that the latter alone, which is identi- 
fied with the monitions of God in the individual 
soul, has abiding truth. Apocalyptic religion, 
under which he would include the whole tra- 
ditional view of the Person and work of Christ, 
is but the fruit of unchastened fancy and 
superstition. 

Again, we meet with fine - spun speculations 
which relegate religion exclusively to the sphere 
of the poetic imagination. It is the realm of 
ideals, of what ought to be over against what is. 
The function of religion, according to this view, 
is to impart to life its values, and to this end 
it clothes itself, from time to time, in such forms 
as make appeal to the popular mind, though these 
forms are necessarily transient and have no in- 
trinsic validity. Religion is distinguished from 
pure ethics in just this quality, that it stirs the 
springs of motive with a new ardour through a 



90 A Christian Apologetic 

pictorial presentation of the truth. But the 
outward dress of historical facts and formulated 
doctrines has nothing whatever to do with its 
real essence. Religion can no more be wedded 
to facts, save in vulgar apprehension, than the 
ideal can be perfectly realised without thereby 
ceasing to be the ideal.^ 

This masterful scorn of facts may seem, at 
first sight, utterly antithetic to the scientific 
temper. But it is so only in appearance. Be- 
hind the apparently ingenuous plea, that religion 
ought not to be handicapped by trivialities of time 
and space, lurks the desire to leave the natural 
world completely in the hands of science. The 
splendid fervour of moral enthusiasm throws a 
glamour over Dr. Martineau"'s negations. But 
where the moral intuitions are less keen, it is 
inevitable that ethical sanctions should lose 
something of their strength, when religion, in 
the common acceptation of the term, is regarded 
as but the dream of the human heart, seeking 
to invest life with adequate emotional values. 
In the more advanced speculations of these ideal- 
istic philosophers, theism itself would seem to 
rest on a rather precarious basis. In accordance 
with a metaphysic, which is, perhaps, more am- 
bitious than profound, a sharp line is drawn 
between existence and reality. Strangely am- 

^ For an ingenious presentation of this super-subtle line of 
reasoning see Poetry and Religion^ bj George Santayana. 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 91 

biguous results follow when one tries to work out 
this distinction in relation to our own self-con- 
scious personality. The truth is that ideals, 
though never perfectly embodied in any act, 
are influential, pass from abstraction to reality, 
only as they find this embodiment in ever 
progressive measure. It is a cheap idealism 
which casts reproach on the actual ; a web spun 
in the air; a clever legerdemain with words. 

But even when it is granted that God''s hand is 
to be traced in history ; that all facts potentially 
contain a revelation ; there remains often a curious 
unwillingness to recognise any exceptional sacred - 
ness in the history of Jesus Christ. Apparently 
there are cryptic reasons against believing that 
revelation can culminate in any special historical 
process ; we are caught in the meshes of super- 
stition unless we regard God's action as evenly 
distributed. Indeed, only in a secondary sense, 
and by way of accommodation, may we say that 
God reveals Himself. For man must possess in 
the resources of his own spirit all the data for 
the development of religion, according to fixed 
laws, without the intervention of any immediate 
divine agency. Evolution is, in these days, a 
powerful word to conjure with, and it is sup- 
posed by many to be the solvent of all tradi- 
tional views concerning the supernatural character 
of the life and work of Jesus Christ. 

Such an a priori denial of the possibility of 



92 A Christian Apologetic 

miracles, however it may wear the face of scien- 
tific certitude, at bottom blankly contradicts the 
whole principle of induction. Having adopted 
the inductive method, we will hold to it, and try 
honestly to face facts. And, as the most as- 
tonishing among the alleged facts of the Gospel 
history, we shall concentrate attention on the 
Resurrection of Jesus Christ, not foreclosing 
argument by assertions concerning what may 
or may not be possible, but seeking to weigh 
the evidence fairly on one side and on the other. 
But before entering upon such an examination, 
it is well that we should dispose of one ques- 
tion — exactly what is meant by calling the 
Resurrection a miracle? 

The word, miracle, has probably done more 
to introduce confusion into the discussion of 
Christian Evidences than any other term. It 
is often used loosely, without any attempt at 
exact definition. When defined, the correlative 
terms involved in the definition are, in turn, 
left obscure. And thus the argument that is 
built up on this indeterminate foundation lacks 
clearness, and lies exposed to every sort of 
critical attack. Etymologically the word means 
a wonder^ and nothing more. Hence has arisen 
a figurative use, which helps to confuse its 
more definitely theological significance. We 
speak of a miracle of beauty or goodness, mean- 
ing thereby what arouses our admiration as 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 93 

beyond the range of our own present accomplish- 
ment. There is a time-worn illustration, seriously 
put forward as throwing light on the nature of 
miracles, which in similar fashion simply blurs 
the outline of any distinctive meaning. The 
tropical savage, who for the first time saw men 
walking on a frozen pond, would behold, it is 
said, what to him were a miracle. Thus a miracle 
is only something which is strange to our present 
experience. 

This general application of the word, which 
makes it merely synonymous with wonderful, 
finds place in many modern Apologetic treatises, 
in a form that is speciously attractive. Whether 
the usage is equally conducive to clearness of 
thought is open to question. Great stress is laid 
on moral miracles, such as the unique beauty of 
the character of Jesus Christ ; the transforma- 
tion of the Apostles after the Resurrection, and 
the like. We cannot object to the prominence 
assigned to these facts; it is quite in accord 
with the argument that we have ourselves been 
pursuing. But the use of the word, miracle, in 
this connection, if more than a rhetorical device, 
is certainly open to criticism. It would seem 
to imply that, in arguing thus, we are following 
the traditional method and resting the weight 
of evidence upon miracles. But this is simply 
to confuse counsel with words. We are, in 
fact, yielding to the exigencies of modern thought 



94 A Christian Apologetic 

and putting miracles, in the proper sense of 
the word, into the background ; while those 
facts which make immediate appeal to the 
moral sense are given the place of pre-eminence. 
To maintain the old nomenclature, while aban- 
doning what it has always signified, can serve 
no good purpose, and may even expose us 
to the charge of disingenuousness. The word, 
miracle, in Apologetic discussion, should be 
reserved for those extraordinary events in the 
physical world, which have always been regarded 
by the Church as evidence of the immediate 
intervention of God. 

To avoid confusion we have narrowed down 
the word to its proper application, but this does 
not advance us far. It still remains to seek out 
the essential quality of these facts which are 
termed miracles, and to determine how far the 
inferences that have been drawn from them are 
justifiable. Does a miracle involve a contra- 
vention or suspension of the laws of nature ? 
If so, its occurrence would manifestly reveal 
the immediate over-ruling hand of God. Before 
we can answer the question, however, we must 
define what we mean by a law of nature. Law, 
as applied to physical phenomena, is simply an 
observed sequence of events. It is the way in 
which things happen, discovered by observation 
and painstaking scientific research. It has in 
itself no executive power; it must not be con- 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 95 

founded with the ultimate force which Hes 
behind the law. If that force be the will of 
God, as every consistent theist must believe, 
then the discovery of a natural law is really 
a reading of God*'s thought, a coming into fuller 
knowledge of the divine reason. The uni- 
formity of nature, the in variableness of natural 
law rests, then, not alone on the inductions 
of science, but upon our reverent apprehension 
of the eternal wisdom. Under this construction, 
it is hard to see how we can consistently deem 
a miracle the suspension of law, in any other 
sense than as the lifting of a hand is a suspension 
of the laws of gravitation. 

In accordance with this general view, a sugges- 
tive analogy has been drawn between miraculous 
agency, and man^s action as related to some 
lower form of intelligence. If, it is urged, we 
can think of the lower animals as so endowed 
that they apprehend an order of nature, then 
many human actions must appear to them 
violations of that order which alone they are 
capable of conceiving. They cannot grasp the 
forces at work, nor understand that combina- 
tion of existing powers which is the fruit of 
man'*s volition. Man is similarly placed as 
regards God. " Such actions are, in fact, signs ; 
those which are peculiar to men, of the presence 
of human intelligence ; those of the divine Christ, 
of divine intelligence and power."" The line of 



96 A Christian Apologetic 

reasoning is cogent, and undoubtedly shows that 
an apparent violation of natural law may be such 
merely to our ignorance. But it offers no hint 
as to how miracles are to be differentiated from 
other providential dealings of God. This differ- 
ence can hardly consist in a more immediate 
presence of God ; for then the question must 
arise — To what distance shall we push God's 
agency in the ordinary course of nature and 
providence, to save space for this more intimate 
intrusion of the divine ? Such quantitative 
differences seem congruous with a deistic con- 
ception of an absent Deity, who commonly works 
through deputed mechanical forces, rather than 
with the truth of an immanent God. 

Similar difficulties beset us when we assert that 
a miracle is a supernatural event, and, therefore, 
legitimate proof of the divine authority of Him 
who works the wonder. Before we can use the 
word, supernatural, intelligently, we must define 
nature, and to do this adequately is by no means 
an easy task. We may, indeed, agree to use 
nature as synonymous with the sphere of God's 
ordinary manifestation of Himself in the physi- 
cal creation, and reserve the word, supernatural, 
for extraordinary manifestations. But this is to 
make the meaning of the word purely relative, 
with edges so blurred as to unfit it for use in 
any closely reasoned argument. Probably, how- 
ever, not much is gained by attempting more than 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 97 

this. Supernatural may be a convenient term 
for popular use ; perhaps it is so embedded in 
conventional religious language that it is un- 
wise to disavow it ; but philosophically it is 
worthless, and it tells us nothing as to the essen- 
tial characteristic of the miraculous. 

In this whole discussion, it is necessary to 
distinguish sharply three questions that are often 
confused. First, are the miracles recorded in 
the New Testament verifiable as facts? Secondly, 
if verifiable, what is their evidential value? 
And thirdly, what is the essential nature of a 
miracle? It is possible for a man to differ 
widely from the traditional view as to the proper 
answer to the second and third of these questions, 
while still accepting implicitly the affirmative 
answer to the first. Our main endeavour should 
be directed to the establishment of the miracles 
as facts. They will then have evidential value 
as corroborative testimony, even though incon- 
clusive if standing alone. And the more abstruse 
speculations, concerning their exact relation to 
other physical phenomena, may be safely left to 
the adjustment of an age which shall have 
advanced to a more perfect synthesis of know- 
ledge than the present can boast. 

When we turn from the confusion incident to 
the modern use of the word, miracle, to the pages 
of the New Testament, we are met by language 
that lays a totally different accent on the whole 

G 



98 A Christian Apologetic 

subject. This is not the only instance in which 
religious thought has suffered detriment in the 
transition from Greek to Latin. Three words 
are used in the New Testament for these facts 
which we are wont to class under the single term, 
miracle ; and the relative frequency with which 
each is used is worthy of careful consideration.^ 
The word that occurs oftenest is aijfjLelov, a sign. 
The emphasis here is plainly on the fact that 
these events are instinct with a message con- 
cerning God, that they are pregnant with deep 
religious significance. Next in frequency stands 
BvpafiL<;^ still a " sign,'' though in more restricted 
sense ; the events bear testimony to the mighty 
working of divine power. And repa^^ the exact 
equivalent of our " miracle,"" is used far less 
often, and never alone ; it is always coupled 
with some other word, as in the phrase " signs 
and wonders.'' ^ 

It will hardly be denied that a distinct loss 
has been entailed through our exclusive use of 
the word, wonder, to cover the whole ground. 
The larger religious significance of the miracu- 

^ See Trench on The Miracles of our Lord. Preliminary 

Essay. 

•It is sometimes difficult to determine whether the refer- 
ence is to what we should properly term miracles. This is 
especially true with regard to the language, of the Apoca- 
lypse. But the following numbers will give an approxi- 
mately accurate idea of the relative frequency with which 
the words are used in the New Testament as applied to 
miracles : o-Tj/j-eTov, 61 ; duvafjus, 28 ; ripasj 16 times. 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 99 

lous history has been thereby seriously obscured. 
No one of the New Testament terms requires 
that we should read into it all the metaphysical 
implications which ha\e been supposed to weight 
the doctrine of miracles. The facts are recorded 
as revelations of various aspects of God^s charac- 
ter, just as the words of Jesus Christ constitute 
such a revelation. They are evidences of God's 
power. They arrest attention because they are 
wonderful. But these are characteristics of many 
other works of God. To erect an impassable 
barrier between miracles and all other phenomena 
is an arbitrary procedure, which finds no warrant 
in Scripture. 

It is self-evident that events of this class will 
have far more weight with eye-witnesses than can 
be looked for in the case of later generations. 
Their impressiveness now is lessened, because the 
testimony that substantiates them must needs be 
subjected to a complicated critical examination. 
The vividness of sense-perception is replaced by 
the dry conclusions of logic. But even for eye- 
witnesses, it is difficult to see how they could 
possess the evidential value which has sometimes 
been imputed to them. Of course, this value will 
always vary, according to the degree of culture of 
the beholder; according to his mode of appre- 
hending the relation of God to the world. But 
if these mighty works were done before our eyes 
to-day, while they would doubtless startle us into 

; L.ofC. 



100 A Christian Apologetic 

attention and be valuable as corroborative evi- 
dence, while we might learn something more of 
God through the ethical lessons conveyed, as it 
were by parable, the miracles in and of them- 
selves would not amount to an Apologetic demon- 
stration. The man who antecedently saw God in 
nature would see Him in these wonders. From 
the point of view of naturalism, the one impulse 
would be to explain them without recourse to the 
hypothesis of any divine working. 

The miracles of the New Testament lack for us 
the confirmation of immediate experience ; but 
they possess another kind of confirmation which 
is, in many ways, more impressive. In the narra- 
tive of the Evangelists they stand in most intimate 
connection with the character and words of Jesus 
Christ. That character, beautiful with all the 
graces of transcendent righteousness, finds reflec- 
tion in the miracles, and they make their appeal 
to our hearts because they are His works. The 
miracles are again and again the occasion prompt- 
ing to words more replete with heavenly wisdom 
than any others that have ever fallen from man's 
lips; we cannot divide between the two. The 
inspiration of the teaching strikes back upon the 
deeds. Together they form a unity which defies 
all critical attempts at severance. How cold and 
irrational seems a purely abstract discussion of 
acts which come to us thus instinct with personal 
power and persuasiveness ! 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 101 

The relative position of importance that we 
have assigned to miracles is certainly not incon- 
sistent with the attitude of Jesus Christ Himself. 
When a certain nobleman besought Him to heal 
his son. He said, " Unless ye see signs and wonders 
ye will not believe."*' He distinctly deprecated 
the demand for a sign from heaven, without which 
the scribes and Pharisees refused to accept His 
Messianic mission. It has been objected that, as 
many of His miracles had been performed publicly, 
the reference here must be to some startling glory 
manifested in the skies, such as the cruder Jewish 
imagination associated with the coming of the 
Messiah. But the inference that Jesus Christ did 
not rest the burden of proof, as to His authority, 
on miraculous attestation still remains unassail- 
able. This conclusion is not dependent upon 
special texts. The whole tenor of His recorded 
words bears unmistakable witness to the fact. He 
says, indeed, " Believe Me that I am in the Father 
and the Father in Me : or else believe Me for the 
very works'* sake.****^ Appeal is here made to His 
works ; but, even so, only a secondary place is con- 
ceded to them as compared with the self-evidencing 
power of His Person. Nor have we the right to 
consider that the reference is exclusively to what 
are commonly called miracles. For His own 
definition of His works we have but to turn to 
the message sent to St. John Baptist in reply to 
1 St. John xiv. 11. 



102 A Christian Apologetic 

his inquiry concerning the Messiah. And there 
we find that they include preaching good news to 
the poor as on a par with raising the dead.^ 

But an Apologetic that lingers too long over 
the general subject of miracles, without bringing 
the whole question to a focus by concentrating 
the argument on the Resurrection, beats the air 
in vain. If Christ, indeed, rose again, this renders 
the account of all His wonderful works probable. 
Instead of its being hard to believe that He per- 
formed them, it were harder to believe the reverse. 
And may we not dissipate scruples by insisting that 
the point at issue is simply this — is the Resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ a Juct ? Too often another 
question — are miracles possible? — engrosses at- 
tention, until the mists of vague generalisation 
completely veil the true centre of interest. The 
possibility of miracles depends upon what we mean 
by the word itself. It is quite conceivable that it 
should be so defined as to render a negative answer 
a foregone conclusion. But it is a strange inepti- 
tude thus to play hide-and-seek with the most 
momentous spiritual crisis of history. Call the 
Resurrection by any name you choose, all that 
vitally concerns us is to know whether, as a matter 
of fact, Jesus Christ rose again. Granted that, if 
the Resurrection be established historically, this 
would not prove Jesus Christ divine; still, it is 
plain that, taken in conjunction with His explicit 
^ St. Matt. 2i. 5. 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 103 

claim to divine authority, it would raise such an 
overwhelming probability in favour of the Gospel 
that all rational objections to the venture of faith 
would be removed. 

Historic facts are never coercive in the religious 
sphere. The Resurrection holds a place of prime 
importance among historic evidences. But the 
function of all outward facts, in the develop- 
ment of faith, may be easily exaggerated. '^ If 
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
will they be persuaded, though one rose from 
the dead.**' We may hope that the history of 
belief will normally follow some such course as 
that sketched in the preceding argument. The 
heart being won by Christ's beauty, a man will 
be led to study more closely His recorded life. 
The attention will then be arrested by the un- 
paralleled audacity of His claims, which yet 
strangely harmonise with all the gentlest and 
most winning traits of His character. This 
ethical mystery demands explanation; the sim- 
plest explanation is that the claims are justifiable. 
If, further, the story of the Resurrection appear 
also inexplicable, fairly considering the weight 
of evidence, unless the historic fact underlying it 
be acknowledged, this may well prompt to an 
abandonment of faith, which will bring with it 
the highest spiritual assurance. But while the 
Resurrection stands isolated, a subject of critical 
examination, without moral or spiritual affilia- 



104 A Christian Apologetic 

tions in the mind of the investigator, it has little 
to do with the genesis of a living faith, however 
the scales of intellectual probability may incline. 
Bearing this in mind, we turn to the records of 
the fact contained in the New Testament. 

The statements of the Synoptists are straight- 
forward and plain, though not as circumstantial 
as we are tempted to desire. St. Matthew tells 
us briefly of an appearance to " Mary Magdalene 
and the other Mary,^"* as they were returning from 
the sepulchre on the first day of the week in the 
early dawn. " And behold, Jesus met them, say- 
ing, All hail. And they came and held Him by 
the feet, and worshipped Him. Then saith Jesus 
unto them. Be not afraid : go tell My brethren, 
that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see 
Me.'^ We then read of the return of the eleven 
into Galilee, where Jesus appeared to them, and 
gave them their commission to teach and to 
baptize.^ In St. Mark, if we omit the last twelve 
verses, which for textual reasons are considered 
by some to form no part of the original Gospel, 
we have only the record of the appearance of an 
angel in the empty tomb, who announces to the 
women that Jesus is risen, and will precede His 
disciples on their journey into Galilee, where they 
shall behold Him.^ St. Luke tells us of the 
empty sepulchre found by the women. We then 
have the account of Jesus meeting with the two 
1 St. Matt, xxviii. 2 g^, Mark xvi. 1-8. 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 105 

disciples on the way to Enimaus. Jesus also 
appears to the eleven in Jerusalem, proves that 
He is no mere apparition, as in their fright they 
had at first supposed, and opens to their under- 
standing the mystery of His Passion.^ 

In St. John we have the most vivid and cir- 
cumstantial narrative 2 — the appearance to Mary 
Magdalene ; the empty tomb visited by St. Peter 
and St. John ; the interview with the disciples on 
the same night ; the appearance again, after eight 
days, to the disciples, when Thomas also, who 
had doubted of their report, was present. And 
in the twenty-first chapter, which bears internal 
evidence of resting on the same authoritative 
tradition, Mpfcave the appearance of Jesus to 
the disciples in Galilee by the Sea of Tiberias. 

Great importance has been attached by hostile 
critics to the differences in the several accounts. 
Not least, among these seeming discrepancies, is 
the transference of the chief appearances of the 
risen Christ to Galilee, in the First and Second 
Gospels; while St. Luke and St. John lay 
emphasis on His appearance in Jerusalem. It 
is hard, no doubt, to harmonise these apparent 
difficulties. But the underlying assumption in 
such criticism is what now concerns us. It pro- 

^ St. Luke xxiv. 

"^ For an interesting argument for the authenticity of the 
Fourth Gospel, based on its account of the Resurrection, see 
Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament^ p. 267 (5th 
edition). 



106 A Christian Apologetic 

ceeds on the supposition that we may look for 
just such an account of these events as would now 
be drawn up to meet modern critical objections. 
This is, in the highest degree, unreasonable. In 
order to anticipate the exact literary methods of 
later scholarship, the Evangelists must needs have 
been veritably turned into automata for register- 
ing facts, in a manner quite inconsistent with 
their historical environment. Had this actually 
happened, we should now have these same critics 
adducing the fact as positive proof that the 
records could not be authentic. So, in either 
case, it is impossible that they should be satisfied. 
It is plain that in the Synoptic Gospels we 
have exceedingly brief records oH| widely-dif- 
fused tradition, containing only HRne or two 
salient points of the story. The accounts are 
not written with any reference to the sceptical 
animadversions of later days. The Church was 
founded on the fact of the Resurrection; every 
Christian believed it implicitly ; many were prob- 
ably living, at the time the Gospels took their 
present shape, who claimed to have seen and 
talked with the risen Christ. Under these cir- 
cumstances there was no possibility of such a 
record being deemed necessary as that which 
modern criticism demands. If we are to have 
any testimony, it would seem unavoidable that 
it should be substantially of such a character as 
that which we now possess. Meanwhile, there 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 107 

is manifestly a naivete and directness about the 
story, as told in the Gospels, which leaves the 
impression of unquestionable good faith. 

But if we confess that the Synoptic Gospels 
embody only a general tradition — and if it be 
probable that the only one for which direct 
Apostolic authority is even claimed, has under- 
gone important modifications before arriving at 
the form in which we now have it — does not this 
militate seriously against the authority of the 
record ? Certainly it seems not unreasonable to 
demand the direct testimony of an eye-witness in 
so all-important a matter. If we acknowledge 
the Fourth Gospel as St. John's, we have such 
testimony. And it is because of the wide-reach- 
ing result of such acknowledgment, weighting 
the argument against the Resurrection with a 
burden too heavy to be borne, that so fierce a 
battle has been waged over this GospePs authen- 
ticity. But, however firmly we ourselves may be 
convinced of its Johannine authorship, we are 
not driven to appeal to the Fourth Gospel in 
order to obtain what amounts to first-hand evi- 
dence, and is confessed as such by all. 

In 1 Corinthians xv. 3-8 we have St. Paul's 
account of the appearances of the Risen Jesus ; 
and the document containing this evidence is 
of unquestioned authenticity. St. Paul believed 
that he himself had seen Jesus Christ on the 
road to Damascus; and his conversion opens up 



108 A Christian Apologetic 

interesting questions as to the power of faith 
in the risen Christ. But it is as a witness to 
the primitive tradition that he is here adduced. 
He was converted within six years of the Cruci- 
fixion, and had personal intercourse with those 
who claimed to have seen Jesus Christ immedi- 
ately after His Resurrection. As a Pharisee in 
Jerusalem he had been bitterly hostile to the 
disciples of Jesus, and must have heard all that 
could be urged against the credibility of the 
Christian claim. Through him, therefore, in 
the passage above cited, we have what is prac- 
tically the first-hand testimony of the Apostles 
themselves, which has also run the gauntlet of 
St. Paul's own criticism, and has been accepted 
by him as consistent and in all respects trust- 
worthy. The fact that it is difficult, in some 
minor points, to make the account given by St. 
Paul fit perfectly into the story as recounted in 
the Gospels, is of slight moment compared with 
the unquestioning allegiance of St. Paul himself 
to the substance of the Apostolic tradition. In- 
deed, the conspicuous absence of solicitude, in 
the matter of perfectly harmonising minor de- 
tails, is indirect evidence of the complete assur- 
ance which possessed the mind of the early 
Church, that no objections could validly be urged 
against the fact of the Resurrection itself. 

It is needful again to remind ourselves that 
the rationalistic approach to this whole question 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 109 

in no sense bears the character of an unbiassed 
historical inquiry. The point of departure is 
always the dogmatic assumption, implied if not 
expressed, that the Resurrection cannot be a 
fact. That being so, it becomes a necessity so to 
manipulate the evidence as to discover some 
plausible explanation of a belief as widespread 
as it is erroneous. If it were simply a question 
of literary evidence, St. PauPs testimony would 
lay the ghost of scepticism for ever. But if we 
know, beyond a peradventure, that Jesus Christ 
did not rise from the dead, then it is incumbent 
on us to explain how it happens that the Resur- 
rection was firmly believed in by His immediate 
disciples. 

The theory of conscious fraud has been practi- 
cally abandoned. The whole tone of the Gospels, 
the spirit and temper of the primitive Church, 
are completely destructive of any such hypothesis. 
And with this theory, the conjecture that Jesus 
was not dead when taken from the Cross, and 
that He revived under the influence of the 
rock-hewn tomb and aromatic spices, is also dis- 
credited ; for, in eflfect, this really involves the 
theory of fraud. A Christ issuing worn and 
bruised from the sepulchre, and helped to some 
place of concealment where He passed the rest 
of His days on earth broken and ineffectual, 
necessitates the supposition that some of His 
friends, at least, were privy to the real facts. 



110 A Christian Apologetic 

yet encouraged the belief that He had miracu- 
lously risen. That a critic of Mr. Huxley**s 
ability should have clung still to this explanation 
inevitably suggests that plausible theories from 
the rationalistic point of view are not easy to 
find. 

The mythical theory is rendered untenable 
by that critical study of the records, which has 
clearly shown that they are too early to allow 
of the time necessary for the development of a 
myth, elaborated with such fulness and con- 
sistency. The words of Harnack represent the 
attitude of present-day scholarship on this 
point : " Sixty years ago David Friedrich Strauss 
thought that he had almost destroyed the 
historic credibility not only of the fourth but 
also of the first three Gospels as well. The 
historical criticism of two generations has suc- 
ceeded in restoring that credibility in its main 
outlines."'' And, again, the same writer says: 
"Strauss' contention that the Gospels contain a 
very great deal that is mythical has not been 
borne out, even if the very indefinite and de- 
fective conception of what 'mythicaP means in 
Strauss'* application of the word, be allowed to 
pass.'*'' ^ 

It would seem, then, that we are driven to 

some form of that theory of hallucination which 

has received its most elaborate treatment at 

1 Harnack's What is Christianity ? Eng. trans, pp. 20 and 23. 



Tlie Resurrection of Jesus Christ 111 

the hands of M. Renan. The great French 
critic has worked it out in detail ; and we could 
wish that others, who appear to be in sub- 
stantial agreement with him, had more frequently 
followed his example in this regard. It is easy 
to enwrap the whole subject in glowing rhetoric; 
to invent hypothetical conversations between the 
Apostles, showing how simply the transition is 
made between the dawning hope that "Jesus 
still lives,*" and the distinct affirmation, " We 
have seen Him/' And too many rest content 
with this. No one will accuse M. Renan of 
neglecting the resources of rhetoric; but he, at 
least, tries to give, along with the romantic 
setting, a clear analysis of the separate steps 
by which the Christian legend grew. And it is 
in just this detailed application of the theory 
that its complete inadequacy becomes apparent.^ 
Stripped of all disguise, it amounts to this. 
The real inventor of the Resurrection was St. 
Mary Magdalene. The hysterical impression- 
ability of an overwrought woman, visiting the 
sepulchre, accounts for the first appearance of 
the risen Christ. "That grand cry from her 
woman's heart, 'He is risen,*"' M. Renan ex- 
claims, "has become the mainspring of faith to 
mankind. Hence, feeble Reason ! Test not by 

^ The ApostleSf chap. i. passim. For a speciaUy striking 
instance of this inadequacy see Kenan's explanation of the 
appearance of Our Lord to the two disciples on the way to 
Emmaus. 



112 A Christian Apologetic 

cold analysis this masterpiece of ideality and 
love ! "" Whether we can join in the critic's 
ecstatic eulogy, will depend upon our taste, and 
the respect which we have for that reason which 
is so summarily adjured to depart. This vision 
of St. Mary, due to disordered nerves, so we 
are asked to believe, worked upon the imagina- 
tion of the whole band of disciples until they 
too became hysterical and took to seeing visions. 
Moreover, they saw them in conjunction, when 
assembled together; and held conversations with 
the visionary figure; and thought that it re- 
sponded in audible words. 

One wishes to treat this theory, so seriously 
propounded, with due respect. But it is hard 
to put it into plain words without seeming to 
cast ridicule upon it. There have been many 
hallucinations in the chequered course of human 
history. Man is prone to be deceived; he 
cannot always draw the line clearly between 
physical phenomena and mere subjective im- 
pressions. But was there ever an hallucination 
like this, which not only affected those who in 
all other respects have proved themselves true 
leaders of men, but which continued its hold, 
repeated itself many times, was the medium of 
long-continued and rational discourse, and has 
moreover been the turning-point in the moral 
and spiritual history of the world ? We cannot, 
in reason, judge of this event as though it stood 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 113 

by itself; its consequences must be reckoned 
with, for effects demand an adequate cause. 

Among these effects requiring explanation, 
there is, first of all, the revolutionary change 
which jmssed upon the character of the disciples. 
It is plain that before the Resurrection their 
views of the Messianic kingdom were still largely 
coloured by the prevalent Jewish conceptions. 
Though they had enjoyed long and loving in- 
timacy with Jesus, their hopes still clung to a 
carnal restoration. But after their intercourse 
with the risen Christ, they go forth heralding a 
spiritual kingdom, perfectly reflecting the spirit 
of that Master whom before they had persistently 
misunderstood. At the Crucifixion, " they all for- 
sook Him and fled '' ; but now they are inspired 
with unflagging zeal and hope, and go forward 
to meet death itself with unwavering courage. 
A complete reconstruction has been accomplished 
in their moral and spiritual apprehensions. 

Moreover, what was the evangel which converted 
the world ? In the accounts that have come down 
to us, in the Book of the Acts, of the first Apos- 
tolic preaching, it is the one fact of the Resurrec- 
tion upon which almost exclusive emphasis is laid. 
The Gospel heralded by St. Paul centres in the 
Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
In Epistles, written with polemic purpose, and 
to churches in which his enemies denied his 
Apostolic authority, he never defends his Christo- 

H 



114 A Christian Apologetic 

logy, though it involves the highest divine claims 
on behalf of Christ, and everywhere assumes 
the fact of His Resurrection. This was, evi- 
dently, ground on which St. Paul felt assured 
that there could be no difference of opinion, and 
that therefore it needed no defence. So central 
was the Resurrection in his belief that he ex- 
claims, "If Christ be not risen, then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."^ 

Either, then — in view of what the Church has 
been as an agent in civilisation and a promoter of 
all that is noblest in life — the mightiest power 
for good in the world has rested on a delu- 
sion, or the Resurrection is a fact. It will 
not serve to say that the moral teaching of 
Christ has alone been the vital factor in the 
Church's influence. As a matter of fact, that 
influence has resulted from the proclamation of 
the risen Christ. It is an arbitrary hypothesis 
to assume that the ethics of Christ alone could 
have accomplished the same work. Lofty ethics 
antedated the Gospel, but they did not re- 
generate the world. St. Paul held that the law 
of righteousness in itself, without a divine power 
enabling man to fulfil the commandment, is " the 
letter that killeth.**' And if, in seeking to 
account for the unparalleled influence of the 
Gospel, we find ourselves forced to look beyond 
the moral teaching of Jesus Christ, and to lay 
1 1 Cor. XV. 14. 



The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 115 

stress on the revelation of God's Fatherhood, 
and the vivid reality thus imported into 
spiritual relations, we cannot do this without 
being brought face to face with a Christ who 
claimed divine prerogatives, and for whom it 
was natural that He should rise again from the 
dead. 

Why, then, should reason longer rebel 
against accepting the fact as chronicled ? We 
dare not affirm that it cannot be. For " who 
is there, up to the present, that has set sure 
bounds to the province of the possible and the 
actual ? "" It is hard to see how, under the 
circumstances, we could have stronger testi- 
mony. All things have eventuated as though 
the Resurrection occurred; all has followed 
that could have been expected to result from 
so stupendous a fact. If true, it justifies what, 
on other grounds, we are forced to believe con- 
cerning the unique beauty and power of the per- 
sonality of Jesus Christ. Would it not, then, 
seem more rational to accept the fact than to 
reject it? 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

RECORDS 

It may have seemed illogical to postpone until 
now any detailed discussion of the historical 
trustworthiness of the New Testament records. 
But the sequence of the argument has a logic of 
its own, which at least is deliberate and not 
adopted through inadvertence. The literary 
character of the documents serving as our source 
of information is important ; but the quality of 
the information conveyed determines the question, 
whether it is of immediate necessity to investigate 
the source before examining the content of the 
message. 

Christianity is not primarily a religion of 
historic reminiscence, though the perversity of the 
human heart is prone thus to misconceive it. If 
the exclusive charter of the Faith lay in a distant 
past, and salvation consisted in believing that 
certain events happened centuries ago, then we 
could not well postpone for a moment strict 
inquiry as to the exact state of the evidence for 
those historic facts upon which all belief must 

116 



Trustworthiness of the Records 117 

rest. The evidence under these circumstances 
would necessarily be for the most part external, 
and of a purely formal character ; the whole issue 
would depend, in the last analysis, upon the 
results of a minute and thorough-going literary 
criticism. And this criticism, if confirmatory, 
would be the very foundation-stone of Christian 
Apology. 

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is primarily 
a life. To be saved is not to believe that some- 
thing happened long ago, but to know God and 
Jesus Christ whom He has sent ; it is to live the 
life of perfect love in fellowship with Jesus Christ. 
The Gospel thus invites to manifold tests other 
than those which lie within the province of a 
strictly scientific or literary criticism. The 
message that Jesus Christ delivered may be put 
to the proof of practical experience, even before 
the question is raised as to the exact historical 
conditions under which that message was first 
uttered. 

The widespread declension of popular Chris- 
tianity from the heights of spiritual accomplish- 
ment to the easier levels, where words are taken 
in lieu of deeds, has much to do with the factitious 
prominence which is often given to the whole 
subject of New Testament criticism. It were 
foolish to deny that all questions which concern 
the primitive records of Christianity are of most 
real importance; nothing is to be gained by 



118 A Christian Apologetic 

belittling their significance. But it is a piti- 
able commentary on the feeble tenure whereby 
Christians hold to their faith, that allegiance 
to Jesus Christ should be determined by any 
decision as to the date and authorship of an 
ancient manuscript. The balance of relative 
importance, as between the outer and the inner 
fact, needs often to be redressed. We must not 
allow, even by implication, that the first appeal 
of the Gospel is to the intellect. And this we 
certainly do, when we suffer Biblical criticism to 
be pushed to the front in the Christian contro- 
versy with unbelief. The heart craves proof 
as well as the head ; its demands are imperative 
in the religious sphere. It is of more immediate 
practical importance that they should be answered, 
than that intellectual curiosity should be gratified. 
Conscience and the spirit have their own tests of 
truth; and the witness which they bear is as 
worthy of confidence as are the clearest deduc- 
tions of the understanding. The latter have 
their due place ; to ignore them wilfully is fatal 
to the highest interests of faith itself: but in 
religion they are subsidiary, and if we give them 
precedence, we run the risk of arriving at fal- 
lacious conclusions. 

We touched indirectly, in the last chapter, on 
the authenticity of the documents that record 
the fact of Christ's Resurrection. It remains for 
us to dwell somewhat more at length upon the 



Trustworthiness of the Records 119 

methods and results of that higher criticism of 
the New Testament, which is often regarded as 
the most impregnable stronghold of modern 
unbelief. The aim and scope of this volume 
forbid that the subject should be treated in 
minute detail and with thoroughness. A great 
department of scholarship cannot be summarised 
in a few pages, nor can the present writer lay 
claim to the technical learning required for an 
adequate treatment of the theme. But a brief 
survey of that part of the field which more 
immediately concerns Apologetics, is possible; 
and there are certain general considerations, 
sometimes overlooked, which will bear restate- 
ment. 

There is, however, one question which arises 
prior to any examination of the critical argu- 
ment. May it not be that, in the interests of 
Apologetics, we are called on to deny the 
fundamental assumptions of the so-called higher 
criticism ? A doctrine of inspiration has been 
widely current in the Church, which claims that 
Scripture was immediately dictated by God, and 
is therefore infallible in its letter as well as 
in its spirit. If such be the true position of 
the believer it forecloses discussion. Literary 
investigation, save for purely textual purposes, 
is an impertinence, not to say an act of sacrilege. 
It would be interesting to follow up this theory 
of inspiration, trace its genesis and the history 



120 A Cliristian Apologetic 

of its growth, seek out its alleged grounds in 
Scripture itself and in the doctrinal decisions of 
the Church. But this would lead us too far 
from the theme w^hich w^e have in hand. One 
thing, however, is clear ; — if this view of in- 
spiration be deemed essential to Christianity, 
the effect on Apologetics would be such as to 
necessitate a total reconstruction of our line 
of reasoning. It would mean, not simply a 
certain attitude tow ard Biblical criticism, but that 
the whole stress of the Apologetic argument must 
be placed on defending this one point of the 
Bible's infallibility. That proved, the rest 
would follow ; an infallible oracle is sufficient 
guarantee for its own utterances. But this 
thesis concerning inspiration is not susceptible 
of inductive proof; it is difficult to see how it 
can be based on other than purely a priori 
grounds. And as induction alone is the avenue 
of approach to the average mind to-day. Apology 
would be rendered practically impossible. 
There were nothing left for the Christian but 
to intrench himself in a determined dogmatism, 
and let the world pass on its way, with no 
attempt on his part to convince or convert. 

If there is to be such a thing, then, as Apology, 
at least along the lines which we have adopted, 
there is no alternative ; w^e must, for the pur- 
poses of our argument, ignore the doctrine of 
verbal inspiration. There is, of course, another 



Trustworthiness of the Recoi^ds 121 

doctrine of inspiration, profoundly spiritual and, 
as we believe, equally orthodox, which is con- 
sistent with a frank recognition of the claims 
of criticism. But, if we once grant the right 
of any critical inquiry whatsoever, it is impossible 
to draw a hard and fast line, and say — thus 
far and no farther. When we yield the principle 
we must allow its freest application. The only 
qualifying condition which may be imposed is 
the demand for sympathetic recognition of the 
moral and spiritual quality of the literature 
to be investigated. And it would seem wiser 
not to permit the word, inspiration, to ob- 
trude itself into the discussion. It is enough 
for our purpose, if we can establish on critical 
grounds that the New Testament is, in the 
main, a trustworthy record of the facts of the 
Gospel history. 

We have said that one qualification in the 
critic may justly be insisted on, namely, that 
he shall acknowledge the Bible as possessing 
pre-eminent religious value. Undoubtedly this 
runs counter to a commonly accepted principle. 
It is assumed, without question, that fairness 
in criticism is dependent upon complete absence 
of bias in the mind of the critic. But to ask 
for such initial neutrality is, in the first place, 
to make an impossible demand. No one can 
hold his judgment in perfect equilibrium, in 
dealing with a book so intimately connected 



122 A Christian Apologetic 

with all the deepest hopes and fears of man- 
kind. The claim frequently put forward, that 
the rationalistic critic is at an advantage in 
this regard, rests upon a curiously unstable 
foundation. As a matter of fact, it would be 
hard to find, in the whole range of scholarly 
enterprise, a more fixed prepossession than that 
which governs in the mind of just this class of 
Biblical critics. Here is a literature which 
purports to contain the record of a unique 
revelation of God ; yet the rationalist has 
already made up his mind that, in no essen- 
tial respect, does it differ from any other litera- 
ture. Biblical history is full of marvellous 
events, which are recorded as signs of God's 
providential care for His people; the critic 
starts from the premise that, in no case, can 
a miracle be authentic. These are not pro- 
positions which he seeks to prove, they consti- 
tute the canons according to which he judges 
the literature. It is plain, then, that he will 
have every interest in discrediting the historical 
character of the narrative, where this is pos- 
sible. He will bring the date of composition 
down to the latest point consistent with pro- 
bability — nay, later still, if he be pressed 
by the exigencies of his theory. There will 
be a temptation to emphasise discrepancies, in 
order to cast doubt on authorship, in a way 
totally different from that in which the same 



Trustworthiness of the Records 123 

facts would be treated in the work of a secular 
historian. Moreover, tradition may come to 
exercise an influence strictly analogous to that 
which is deprecated in the case of ecclesiastical 
predilections. Great names connected with some 
ingenious critical theory, like the "tendency*" 
hypothesis of Baur, become the rallying point 
of schools of thought, until it is considered akin 
to disloyalty to pass a judgment which contravenes 
the dominant mode of interpretation. Similar 
dangers threaten the believing critic from the 
other side. But to regard him as at a dis- 
advantage when compared with his opponent, 
and, in the purely critical field, to give all the 
honours of fearless integrity to the latter, is to 
run in the face of facts. 

We may go farther. If we are convinced of 
the reality which lies behind our religious ex- 
perience; if there be truth in the contention 
that God has revealed Himself in history, and 
that the Bible is the storehouse of that revela- 
tion ; then, plainly, a certain religious aptitude 
is needful if the critic is to be really competent 
for his task. The man who has no ear for the 
music of verse, who confounds the insight of 
the poetic imagination with the play of fancy, 
and counts its sway over the heart among the 
foibles and weaknesses of humanity, is not 
the critic whose judgment, in this particular 
department of literature, would commend itself 



124 A Christian Apologetic 

as trustworthy. Nor should we set the task of 
determining the specific value of some rare work 
of art, to one who was lacking in aesthetic appre- 
ciation and ignorant of the laws of artistic 
expression. Why, then, may we not demand 
that the Biblical critic shall be, at the same 
time, a moral and religious expert, if his con- 
clusions are to bring home conviction ? The 
tyro in these weightier matters, whose only 
equipment is linguistic or archaeological learning, 
may often make a happy guess; he may dis- 
sipate illusions and correct mistakes, within the 
limits of his special line of scholarship; but he 
will hardly speak the last word concerning that 
book which chronicles the life and teaching of 
Jesus Christ. 

The question as to the trustworthiness of 
Christian records naturally falls under the two 
heads of external and internal evidence. The 
former is of such a kind, that a certain amount 
of technical training is necessary, before the 
argument can be fully appreciated. But there 
are general principles and broad results which all 
can understand. And in the matter of internal 
evidence, even wider scope is given for judgments 
of common sense, which the plainest man is com- 
petent to pass. There has been a wonderful 
advance since the days of Strauss' thoroughly 
uncritical assumptions and Baur's brilliant and 
specious a priori reasoning. Honest and patient 



Trustworthiness of the Records 125 

investigation of facts has characterised more 
recent critical research; and, on the whole, the 
conclusions of scholars have tended more and 
more to coincide with the traditional view as to 
the date and authorship of the New Testament 
writings. It is true, that the phenomena pre- 
sented by the Synoptic Gospels are so complex 
that the theories concerning the exact mode of 
their compilation, and their mutual interdepend- 
ence, are legion. But out of this confusing mass 
of hypotheses, there emerges a distinct tendency 
toward admitting that their character is sub- 
stantially that of contemporary documents. Har- 
nack says, "that the tradition here presented to 
us is, in the main, at first hand is obvious."" And 
so cautious a critic as Sanday concludes, that 
"the great mass of the narrative in the first 
three Gospels took its shape before the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, i.e. within less than forty 
years of the events.'' 

As far as purely external evidence is concerned, 
it is frequently contended that the Four Gospels 
are better attested than the chief works of 
classical literature; and it has been urged that 
this ought to be sufficient. But while this infer- 
ence is a fair one, if we have regard only to the 
cogency of the evidence in the eyes of Christians, 
it can easily be pressed too far. If such 
serious consequences flowed from the accept- 
ance of some Greek or Latin classic, as from 



126 A Christian Apologetic 

the acknowledgment of the Gospels, we should 
doubtless have equally extravagant demands 
for proof of its authenticity. The story of 
wonders occurring in Homer or Ovid, is 
of no concern to present - day life. Call it 
the mere riot of fancy, regard it as myth, 
or legend, or deliberate fraud, it matters 
not. But the miracles of the Gospel cannot be 
thus dismissed. They are recorded soberly as 
facts; they are closely connected with the be- 
ginnings of that religion which has dominated 
the world; hence, it is inevitable that the 
question, whether the record be early or late, 
should become of momentous import. Every 
critical device will be called into play, on the 
one hand to invalidate a literature involving 
such wide-reaching religious consequences, and 
on the other to establish its authenticity. 

In one way, the very fact that the New Tes- 
tament literature has always held a place of 
peculiar sacredness and authority in the Church, 
helps us in the construction of the evidential 
argument. Conservative forces have thus been 
arrayed against the corruption of the tradition, 
or the sudden introduction of novel material. 
The bearing of this fact will become more ap- 
parent when we consider the earliest testimony 
to the Four Gospels, which is universally acknow- 
ledged as above all question. 

In the last quarter of the second century, we 



Trustworthiness of the Records 127 

have passed beyond the region where conflicting 
opinions of critics can make us doubtful of the 
weight of the evidence adduced. The testimony 
of Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian 
proves clearly that, at this time, our Four Gos- 
pels were acknowledged by the Church, through- 
out the world, not only as authentic but as 
possessed of supreme authority.^ 'Ihey were 
read in the public services along with the Old 
Testament, and there are unmistakable signs that 
they were regarded with profound veneration, as 
being the utterance, not merely of men, but of 
the Holy Ghost. Whether these Fathers of the 
Church are completely trustworthy guides, either 
in their exegesis of Scripture or their special 
views of inspiration, does not concern our pre- 
sent inquiry. It is beside the mark, for instance, 
to cast ridicule on the reasons given by Irenaeus 
for the fact that there are four Gospels and no 
more. The point which we would now empha- 
sise is this — books which had acquired so wide- 
spread a sanctity could not have been of yesterday. 
The testimony of these writers carries us back 
beyond the date of their own explicit statements. 
Time is required, that books may win a place of 
unquestioned acceptance in a religious society 
scattered over the world. Were there no earlier 

^ The argument in the text is largely indebted to Salmon's 
Introduction to the New Testament. Comp. also B. Weiss, 
Manual of Introduction to the New Testament. 



128 A Christian Apologetic 

references to the Four Gospels, we should be 
forced to conjecture that they had been in circu- 
lation for at least a generation, before appeal could 
be made to them, in widely separated branches 
of the Church, as the absolute standard of Chris- 
tian teaching. But we are not obliged thus to 
rely on conjecture. 

Comparatively recent discoveries have proved 
that Tatian's Diatessaron was a harmony of the 
Four Gospels which we now possess.^ Tatian was 
himself a pupil of Justin Martyr ; and if we may 
infer the master's acceptance of the Gospels from 
that of the disciple, we are carried back to the 
middle of the second century. It is true, that 
Justin's own references are to memoirs of the 
Apostles, and not explicitly to the Gospels by 
name. But as these references occur in Apolo- 
getic writings addressed to heathen, who did not 
accept the authority of the Sacred Books, it is not 
unnatural that they should be general, and that 
exact quotations should be infrequent. Mean- 
while, it is certainly a violent supposition, that 
Justin Martyr having in hand certain traditions 
concerning Jesus Christ, which had been put 
into literary form, his disciple should have ig- 
nored these writings and should have received, 
without question, four versions of our Lord's life, 
which had been subsequently foisted on the 
Church. Many critics hold, independently of 
1 Com p. The Gospel and its Witnesses, by H. Wace, pp. 16/. 



Trustworthiness of the Records 129 

these considerations, that Justin Martyr gives 
direct evidence of having used our Synoptic Gos- 
pels, and that his thought is largely coloured by 
the special teaching of the Gospel of St. John. 

Until the discovery of the apocryphal Gospel 
of St. Peter, an heretical work probably used by 
Justin, and dated by most critics in the first 
quarter of the second century, it was supposed 
that no earlier external testimony to the Four 
Gospels, except the well-known reference of 
Papias, was extant. But the writer of the 
Gospel of St. Peter appears to have used our 
Gospels.i At least, he gives evidence of having 
been influenced by the separate lines of tradition 
which they embody ; and as these represent 
circles of thought in widely severed portions of 
the Church, it is most natural to conclude that 
he had our Gospels before him. 

The reference of Papias to the Gospels of St. 
Matthew and St. Mark has been the source of 
very various theories. It is not necessary for us 
to enter upon the vexed questions arising from 
the ambiguity of his words. But it is certainly 
very precarious to argue ex silentio against the 
existence of the Third and Fourth Gospels at 
this time. 

The fact, that we have such scant literary 
remains of the age immediately succeeding that 

^ Comp. Sanday's Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, pp. 
310/. 

I 



130 A Christian Apologetic 

of the Apostles, is sufficient explanation why 
no more abundant early testimony is available. 
Granted that the thread of external testimony is 
slight, we must ever bear in mind that the vital 
question for Apologetics is this, — Caji the Gospels 
be accepted as trustworthy? — not, as is often 
assumed, — Mvst they be so accepted ? If there 
were no inner cogency in these writings, making 
direct appeal to the heart, then, let it be acknow- 
ledged, the external testimony might possibly 
seem too weak to bear the weight resting upon 
it. But since they contain an evangel which 
has transformed the world, it is enough if the 
external evidence be favourable so far as it goes, 
and does not contradict the claims put forward 
by the writings themselves. It is not as 
though the appeal of Scripture were recognised 
exclusively by Christians ; it must be felt in 
greater or less degree by all men of ingenuous 
mind. These writings are unique in spiritual 
beauty and power. The burden of proof may 
justly be laid, then, on those who deny their 
authority. And the contention that the Gospels, 
in their present form, were unknown in the 
Church far into the second century, has still to 
be substantiated. 

What has been said above in regard to the 
Gospels may be taken to apply, in large measure, 
both to the Synoptists and to St. John. But the 
Fourth Gospel stands, in many ways, on a plane 



Trustworthiness of the Records 131 

by itself, and demands separate consideration. 
The character of the book is such that more 
serious consequences to the rationalistic position 
flow from its acceptance. And, moreover, here 
it is possible to rely on internal evidence to a 
greater extent than is the case with the other 
Gospels. For it is plainly the work of one 
author ; it bears no mark of embodying a general 
tradition, but, on the other hand, it is stamped 
in every detail with the impress of a striking 
individuality. It professes to be the account of 
an eye-witness ; and although the writer is not 
named, no one can doubt that the book clearly 
implies that he is the Apostle John. This claim 
to Apostolic authorship is of first importance, 
for it makes one of two hypotheses necessary. 
Either St. John did, indeed, write the Gospel, 
or else it is a deliberate forgery, intended to 
deceive the Church. This is not too harsh a 
statement of alternatives, nor does it argue a 
faulty historic perspective. Doubtless the idea 
of what constitutes literary honesty has under- 
gone great modifications. What would be dis- 
honest to-day was deemed justifiable in former 
times. But here it is not a question of using 
the great names of an earlier generation, which 
contemporaries could not mistake, to add dig- 
nity to an argument by giving it an impressive 
historical setting. Nor is it an instance, like 
the case of ancient prophets, where the burden 



132 A Christian Apologetic 

of the message swallowed up all thought of 
authorship. If St. John be not the author, 
every cleverest shift is resorted to in order to 
give the impression that he was. Not once is 
he directly named, but the subtlest touches con- 
stantly imply his identity with the writer. Indeed, 
on this hypothesis, the ingenuity displayed some- 
times almost passes credence. For instance, in 
this Gospel alone, the Baptist is mentioned invari- 
ably as John, with no distinguishing title ; in one 
man's mind, at least, there could be no thought 
of any confusion thus arising. We seem forced, 
then, either to regard it as the writing of the 
Apostle, or to reject it utterly as unworthy of 
a place in the New Testament ; for if it be not 
St. John's, while professing to set forth Him 
who is the Truth, its fundamental motive is 
indistinguishable from sheer dishonesty. 

No one denies that this Gospel contains vivid 
details of description, which are most easily ex- 
plained as springing from the memory of an 
eye-witness. Little notes of time are given — the 
exact hour when certain events occurred. Or 
again, we find slight incidents recorded, which 
reflect a bit of local colour, but are not im- 
mediately related to the general theme. The 
account of the Passion and the Resurrection is 
full of the marks of verisimilitude. And yet, 
notwithstanding this, the writer is often spoken 
of as though his work were, in the main, a 



Trustworthiness of the Records 133 

kind of mystical rhapsody, the outcome of late 
Hellenistic speculation. Nothing could be further 
from the truth. It has been convincingly shown 
that, although the Gospel is written in the 
interests of an advanced Christology, its tone 
is emphatically Hebraic and not Greek. ^ And 
with all its animadversions on the unbelieving 
Jews, the author not only displays thorough 
familiarity with Palestine, but also, on more 
than one occasion, the deepest sympathy with 
the privileges and prerogatives of the Chosen 
People. Moreover, the doctrine concerning the 
Person of Christ, contained in this Gospel, fur- 
nishes no proof of a late date ; for all its loftiest 
conceptions find parallel in St. PauPs Epistles.^ 
And the anti-Jewish bias of the author is no 
more pronounced than that which characterised 
the Apostle who had been brought up a Pharisee 
of the Pharisees. 

It cannot be denied that grave difficulties pre- 
sent themselves, when we attempt to harmonise 
perfectly, not only minor details but even the 
more general outlines of our Lord's life, in the 
Synoptists and the Fourth Gospel. In St. John, 

1 See the chap, entitled " The Fourth Gospel," in Hutton's 
Theological Essays. 

2 For a catena of references see note on p. 202 of Salmon's 
Introduction (5th edition). One of the strongest objections 
brought against the Johannine authorship of the Gospel, 
that relating to the quarto-deciman controversy, is ably 
dealt with by both Salmon and Hutton, in the works above 
referred to. 



134 A Christian Apologetic 

the public ministry of Jesus is represented as 
centred in Jerusalem ; while in the Synoptists, 
Galilee appears to be the principal scene of His 
activity. The length of the ministry would seem, 
at first sight, to be much shorter in the Synop- 
tists than in the Fourth Gospel. We have al- 
ready pointed out the apparent divergence as to 
the scene of the chief Resurrection appearances. 
But the Synoptists undoubtedly represent the sub- 
stance of a long-established oral tradition which 
first shaped itself for purposes of evangelisation. 
They thus bear the stamp of the practical pro- 
paganda from which they sprang. This w^ould 
account, in large measure, for their distinctive 
features, especially if the oral tradition originated 
in Galilee. And, in any event, the differences 
pointed out are not sufficient to influence mate- 
rially our decision as to the Johannine authorship 
of the Fourth Gospel. 

The opinion of M. Renan concerning this Gos- 
pel is especially interesting. We may, perhaps, 
question whether he would have approximated 
so closely to the traditional view, had not his 
peculiar theory of hallucination rendered the 
admissions innocuous in his eyes, so far as the 
general rationalistic position is concerned. But 
the hallucination hypothesis must stand or fall by 
its own merits ; and, meanwhile, the significance 
of his literary judgment is noteworthy. His vary- 
ing attitude toward the Fourth Gospel is fairly 



Trustworthiness of the Records 135 

described by Dr. Wace. "It has fluctuated in 
a very singular manner ; but on one point it has 
not altered. In the first edition of his Life of 
Jesus^ and in the sixth volume of his Origins 
of Christianity^ he confesses himself greatly 
struck by the incidental indications of authen- 
ticity presented by the Fourth Gospel. He 
notices the ' slight traces of precision ** ; the 
^freshness of its reminiscences,'' Mike those of old 
age**; the little touches of detail — 'It was the 
sixth hour**; 'It was night'; 'The man'^s name 
was Malchus ' ; ' They had made a fire of coals, 
for it was cold,** and the like. But, on the other 
hand, he cannot endure the discourses which are 
attributed to our Lord in that Gospel. He calls 
them ' prolix,*" ' arid,** ' interminable,*" ' full of ab- 
struse metaphysics and personal allegations.*" He 
is thus divided between the conviction, on the 
one hand, of the authenticity of the Gospel 
which is forced on him by the narrative portions 
of it, and the doubts of its authenticity, on the 
other hand, which arise from his inability to 
appreciate the discourses of our Saviour. Be- 
tween these opposing influences he has oscillated, 
now regarding the Gospel as substantially the 
work of St. John, although edited and retouched 
by his disciples, and again supposing that it 
was not the work of St. John, but of one of 
his disciples, the discourses being factitious, but 
the narrative parts, including precious traditions. 



136 A Christian Apologetic 

being due to St. John. His final conclusion, in 
his sixth volume, embodies these contradictions 
in their most remarkable form. 'The Fourth 
Gospel," we are told, Hhough a writing of no 
value for the purpose of knowing how Jesus 
spoke, is superior to the other three in respect 
to matters of fact.*" Could there be a more ex- 
traordinary phenomenon than this — a work 
which possesses in the highest degree the value 
of an eye-witness''s report on the deeds of the per- 
son of whom it speaks, but which is of no value 
at all in respect to his words ? '*'' ^ The opinion 
of M. Renan as to the discourses of Jesus in St. 
John's Gospel needs no comment; but his ad- 
missions in regard to the record of events are 
a striking witness to the weight of argument in 
favour of St. John's authorship. 

The Book of the Acts, while it does not bear 
directly on the authenticity of the Gospel narra- 
tive, has yet a special importance, in this connec- 
tion, because of the relation in which it stands to 
the Third Gospel. Tradition says that St. Luke, 
being a personal companion of St. Paul, gives us 
in his Gospel that form of the common tradition, 
upon which the Apostle to the Gentiles based his 
teaching. This would lend Apostolic authority to 
the Third Gospel, and bring it into touch with 
the testimony of eye-witnesses. As it is generally 
acknowledged that the Third Gospel and the 
^ The Gospel and its Witnesses, p. 33. 



Trustworthiness of the Records 137 

Acts are from the same hand, the authorship of 
the latter becomes of great Apologetic interest. 

The external evidence for the Book of the 
Acts is even stronger than that for the Gospels. 
Meanwhile, the influence of the Tiibingen school 
has told strongly against acceptance of the 
traditional view of its authorship. The "ten- 
dency *''' hypothesis absolutely requires that a late 
date be assigned to a history that represents St. 
Paul as working, from the first, in perfect accord 
with the other Apostles. But a theory that re- 
constructs history, regardless of the records, and 
then judges the latter according to their agree- 
ment with the arbitrary standard adopted, is 
untrue to the first principles of sound criticism. 
If we are to regard the book as in any sense an 
eirenicon, it is certainly not as mediating between 
a Pauline and a Petrine party : there are far 
plainer marks of an aim, on the writer's part, so 
to represent the relation of St. Paul to the 
Imperial authorities, as to soften the growing 
asperity between the Church and the Empire.^ 

The one greatest difficulty encountered, by 
those who deny that the writer was a companion 
of St. Paul, lies in adequately explaining, on this 
hypothesis, the so-called " we sections "'' of the 
book. These bear every mark of being the notes 

1 For much new light thrown on the Book of Acts see 
Ramsay's Church in the Roman Empire, and St. Paul, the 
Traveller and the Roman Citizen, 



138 A Christian Apologetic 

of an eye-witness, and are acknowledged as such 
by all competent critics. But when the attempt 
is made to sever them from the rest of the book, 
it is found that they are so interwoven with the 
narrative as a whole, and bear so many signs of 
the same authorship, that it becomes necessary to 
suppose that they were thoroughly worked over, 
before being incorporated into the Acts. Now, 
the author, whoever he be, is plainly no bungler. 
Above most of the other books of the New Testa- 
ment, the Acts and the Third Gospel betray a 
skilful literary hand in their composition. How 
comes it, then, that if possessed of an older 
document, which he used freely, the writer should 
still have left the line of cleavage so plain, when 
he incorporated it into his own work ? It would 
have been a simple matter, and have added literary 
unity to his history, if the first person had been 
altogether abandoned — unless, indeed, the author 
wished to mark that he was, on these occasions, 
personally present with St. Paul. 

The fact that no use whatsoever is made of St. 
PauPs Epistles is in favour of the book's authen- 
ticity, rather than the reverse. It seems incredible, 
that a later writer, in reporting the speeches of 
the Apostle, should not have availed himself of 
material that lay ready to hand, and which would 
have given a familiar colouring to St. Paul's words. 
Meanwhile the speeches are not without traces of 
the Pauline diction, and differ from the Epistles, 



Trustworthiness of the Records 139 

only so far as the extempore speeches of a man 
of action might well differ from the same man's 
deliberate literary composition. It must be 
granted, that the parallelism, in the Acts, between 
certain incidents in the lives of St. Peter and St. 
Paul suggests design ; and the emphasis laid upon 
it gives, at times, an impression of artificiality. 
Moreover, it is not always easy to fit the events 
of St. Paul's life, incidentally referred to in the 
Epistles, into the outline of his biography fur- 
nished by the Acts. But it is as reasonable to 
attribute this to our own imperfect information, 
as to mistakes on the part of the historian. And 
it is one of the more noteworthy results of recent 
criticism, that it has brought to light many facts 
which strikingly corroborate St. Luke's accuracy ; 
so that, on purely critical grounds. Prof. Ramsay 
is inclined to place him in the front rank of 
ancient historians. 

There seems, then, no sufficient reason for 
doubting, that, in the Book of the Acts, we 
have a trustworthy history, from the hand of 
a personal companion of St. Paul. And, in so 
far as this conclusion is well-grounded, a new 
link is forged in the chain of evidence for the 
historic credibility of the Synoptic Gospels. 

Another distinct line of argument, in favour 
of the Four Gospels as embodying a primitive 
tradition, can be drawn from the Epistles of 
St. Paul. We have already had occasion to 



140 A Christian Apologetic 

refer to the importance of St. PauPs testimony 
to the fact of the Resurrection. The consensus 
of opinion as to the date of Galatians, 1 and 
2 Corinthians, and Romans, gives us a point 
of leverage, the value of which can hardly 
be exaggerated. If, in writings undoubtedly 
falling within thirty years of the Crucifixion, 
we find a picture of Jesus Christ perfectly ac- 
cordant with that contained in the Gospels, 
this at least proves that the latter is not the 
result of late legendary accretions. St. Paul 
held personal converse with the immediate dis- 
ciples of Jesus Christ; and there is no ground 
for doubting that what he taught concerning 
Christ's Person reflects the universal belief of the 
Apostolic Church. For, in his sharpest polemics, 
there is no apology for his Christological doctrine ; 
this he plainly deemed unassailable, even his 
enemies and detractors were at one with him 
in this. 

The pre-existence of Christ is taught, by im- 
plication, as clearly as in the prologue to the 
Fourth Gospel. " When the fulness of the time 
was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a 
woman, made under the law, to redeem them 
that were under the law, that we might receive 
the adoption of sons." "To us there is but 
one God, the Father, of whom are all things, 
and we in Him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by 
whom are all things, and we by Him.'" Jesus 



Trustworthiness of the Records 141 

Christ is sinless; ^^For He hath made Him to 
be sin for us, who knew no sin ; that we might 
be made the righteousness of God in Him."" He 
is one with the Eternal Truth; "For all the 
promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him 
Amen, unto the glory of God by us."^ He is 
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption 
unto men.2 These quotations could be indefinitely 
multiplied, were we to turn to the Epistles of the 
Captivity. And it is fair to say that the latter 
are attested by just as strong external evidence 
as the Epistles from which we have quoted. 
But it is not necessary to go beyond those letters 
that all acknowledge, to establish sufficiently 
the divine attributes of Christ, according to St. 
PauFs teaching. 

It is remarkable that the Apostle makes so 
little direct use of the sayings of Jesus Christ, 
which must, at least, have been current in the 
oral Gospel, and that he refers so infrequently 
to events in our Lord's earthly life. But it 
is impossible that this should have been due 
entirely to ignorance on his part. We are 
rather to infer that he takes a knowledge of the 
Gospel narrative for granted, and that the 
special purpose with which he wrote led him 
to build on the Gospel as a foundation, instead 

1 Gal. iv. 4, 5 ; 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; 2 Cor. i. 
20. 

2 1 Cor. i. 30. 



142 A Christian Apologetic 

of repeating its incidents. Yet even so, we find 
many references to the earthly life and character 
of Jesus scattered through St. PauFs Epistles. 
"For even Christ pleased not Himself; but, as 
it is written, The reproaches of them that re- 
proached thee fell on me.'" " Now I Paul 
myself beseech you by the meekness and gentle- 
ness of Christ." " For the love of Christ con- 
straineth us ; because we thus judge, that if 
one died for all, then were all dead : and that 
He died for all, that they which live should not 
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him 
which died for them, and rose again."*' ^ In 
accord with the picture of the judgment, set 
forth by Jesus in the Gospels, we find St. Paul 
appealing to that day — " For we must all appear 
before the judgment seat of Christ; that every 
one may receive the things done in his body, 
according to that he hath done, whether it be 
good or bad.'' 2 There are also distinct state- 
ments concerning the Institution of the Eucharist, 
the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Burial, the 
Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Heavenly 
Reign of Christ. Thus, in St. Paul, we have 
the chief facts of the narrative of the Evan- 
gelists confirmed by a witness, regarding whose 
identity and date there can be no question. 

When we turn to the internal evidence for 

1 Kom. XV. 3 ; 2 Cor. x. 1 ; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 

2 2 Cor. V. 10. 



Trustworthiness of the Records 143 

the trustworthiness of the Gospels, we find that 
many of the strongest arguments are such, that 
any careful student of Scripture can weigh them 
for himself, though he be ignorant of all 
critical technicalities. Let us confess frankly 
that we are confronted with certain discrep- 
ancies in the four accounts. Old-fashioned 
attempts at a formal harmonising of the Gospels 
are more or less discredited ; they impress us too 
often by their ingenuity rather than by their in- 
genuousness. The fact that the Gospel passed 
through a period of oral transmission, before it 
was written down in the exact form in which 
we now possess it, while not detracting from its 
authority, partly explains how divergencies might 
arise. Many seeming contradictions may be due 
entirely to our ignorance. But, granting that 
some actually exist, they become insignificant, in 
the light of the wonderful consistency which 
marks the Gospels in all that concerns the moral 
and spiritual character of their message. 

Let any one read, for instance, the history of 
the Passion, which occupies so large a share of 
our Lord's life, as recorded by all four Evan- 
gelists. Let him consider well all that is involved 
in the telling of that straightforward story. 
Whatever the date of their compilation, the 
Gospels took shape in the midst of a Society 
which unquestioningly looked to the Apostles as 
its most glorious representatives. They were 



144 A Christian Apologetic 

men held in deepest veneration, not only for 
their sanctity, but because of their having been 
personal companions of our Lord. What part 
should we have expected them to play, in an 
idealised history of the awful events connected 
with the last days of the earthly life of Jesus ? 
Surely, one widely contrasted with that which is 
actually presented in the narrative as it now lies 
before us. These, the leaders and the saints of 
the Church, are here set forth as grossly ignorant 
of the real significance of the supreme crisis that 
is impending; they are disheartened at seeming 
failure, arrant cowards in the desertion of their 
Master; the chief among them denies his Lord 
with an oath. There is no slightest attempt to 
gloze over these facts ; they are told in simple 
words, without palliation or apology. The figure 
of Jesus Christ Himself is touched with the pathos 
of an irresistible truthfulness. The Evangelists, 
when they wrote this history, adored Him as 
the Son of God, reigning on the right hand of 
the Father ; yet the picture drawn of the suffer- 
ing Christ is relieved by scarce a ray of the 
heavenly triumph. The Agony in the Garden ; 
the anguish of the Crucifixion; the mysterious 
cry, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken 
Me?**' — who can read the story and doubt that 
it is a simple transcript of fact ? But the honesty 
here evinced is reflected back upon the rest of the 
narrative. If romance and legend will not account 



Trustworthiness of the Records 145 

for the later scenes, it is presumptuous to deny to 
the rest similar good faith and historic fidelity ; 
for the tone of the Gospels is singularly consistent 
throughout. 

But why lay exclusive stress on the history of 
the Passion ? One supreme test can be applied 
to the whole course of the recorded life, namely, 
the character of Jesus Christ. That character as 
portrayed in the Gospels is absolutely consistent ; 
it never lapses from its unapproachable height of 
moral perfection. Exquisite in its gentleness and 
sympathy, awful in the majesty of its holiness 
and power, it convinces the world by sheer force 
of incomparable beauty. The Evangelists are 
unerring in this portraiture; they fall into no 
contradictions ; the pen never slips so as to 
mar, in any measure, the impressiveness of this, 
the central Figure of their story. Whatever 
theory we may entertain as to the composition 
of the Gospels, their authors must be regarded as 
relatively independent witnesses. That, under 
these circumstances, they should have succeeded 
in depicting a character that is unrivalled in its 
moral grandeur, and at the same time perfectly 
harmonious and at unity with itself, is a marvel 
unparalleled in the whole range of literature. 
The fact would seem to raise them above all cavil 
as reporters of truth. 

Thus converging lines of evidence go to 
prove the substantial trustworthiness of the 

K 



146 A Christian Apologetic 

Christian records. Jesus Christ is, at the least, 
the very embodiment of intense and search- 
ing truthfulness. The Evangelists, and those 
whose testimony they record, lived in the blaze 
of this truth, and devoted their lives to its 
service. They were themselves transfigured 
morally, and moreover, after-history has proved 
them right in their confidence regarding the 
triumph of the Messianic Kingdom. Of their 
good faith there is no question. The problem, 
then, resolves itself into this — were they, or 
were they not, competent to pass judgment on 
matters of fact, which they had every oppor- 
tunity to verify ? 

Because many of these facts are unique, as 
they must have been if the divine claim of 
Christ be true, are we therefore forced by reason 
to deny them ? It is somewhat sophistical to 
profess willingness to investigate candidly the 
claims of Christ, and then, because these claims 
are substantiated in the only way in which it 
is possible for them to be, to make this a 
ground of rejection. Such a procedure is peril- 
ously near to reasoning in a circle, which is 
never likely to advance us far in the pursuit 
of truth. Yet, unphilosophical as this method 
manifestly is, it does not lack distinguished 
advocates, when the question at issue is the life 
of Jesus Christ recorded in the Gospels. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WITNESS OF PROPHECY 

It is frequently assumed that Apologetic 
argument, based on prophecy, has received its 
death-blow. The best scholarship of the day 
denies the Messianic bearing of many proof- 
texts, on which a former generation confidently 
relied ; and criticism has played havoc with 
the most striking instances of miraculous pre- 
diction. We must all acknowledge the dreari- 
ness of fighting the ground, inch by inch, in 
defence of some traditional interpretation, which 
a more thorough-going exegesis has shown to 
be untenable, according to the canons of 
common sense. But if this leading of a forlorn 
hope be disheartening to the individual, it has 
other and more serious consequences. It is 
prejudicial to the whole subject of Apologetics, 
and tends to render it distasteful to fair-minded 
men. Wisdom and honesty both prompt to 
the admission, that much of the old argument 
from prophecy is hopelessly discredited; to try 
to rehabilitate it, is a tactical blunder of the 
first magnitude. 

147 



148 A Christian Apologetic 

That argument may be stated somewhat 
crudely, but with substantial accuracy, as 
follows. By immediate divine revelation, a 
number of men, centuries before the Birth of 
Christ, minutely predicted the exact circum- 
stances of His earthly life and character. The 
New Testament record is accordingly to be 
fitted into the prophetic literature, as the pieces 
of a child's cardboard puzzle are matched to- 
gether. And the detailed coincidences between 
prophecy and fulfilment are to be regarded as 
proof that the entire scheme is of divine origin. 

On the whole, it seems likely that the healthy 
sentiment of the present age would have been 
revolted by this mode of reasoning, even if criti- 
cism had left the crucial passages of the Old 
Testament untouched. The higher trend of 
modern thought is toward a dynamic rather 
than a mechanical conception of the universe. 
When one stops to consider the matter calmly, it 
certainly seems somewhat unworthy of God that 
prophets should have uttered their message, with 
the main intent of bolstering up the faith of 
later days, by furnishing a miraculous parallel to 
the Evangelic history. The mere foretelling of 
an isolated event that is to happen centuries 
hence, can be considered a spiritual revelation, 
only by a somewhat roundabout process of 
thought. It could surely have little bearing on 
the religious life of those who first spoke the 



The Witness of Prophecy 149 

message, or those who hearkened to it. Mean- 
while, an honest study of the prophetic literature 
itself gives little support to such an interpretation. 
If one thing more than another impresses us in 
the Hebrew prophets, it is the vitality of their 
relationship to their own age. There is no 
slightest trace that they regarded themselves as 
mere passive instruments for registering future 
events. Their self-surrender to God is, indeed, 
complete; they are swept irresistibly onward by 
the power of a divine inspiration, uttering words 
which are not their own; but the message is 
always of immediate import, interpreting life, 
counselling in present exigencies, denouncing 
judgment and promising salvation as an im- 
minent experience, pressing hard toward fulfil- 
ment. When the future is unveiled before them, 
it is always a future pregnant with significance 
for the present. Faith, in its fervour, may un- 
seal the eye so that its forward glance overleaps 
centuries ; but the revelation has to do with the 
unfolding of eternal principles of God's provi- 
dence, rather than with the adventitious circum- 
stances of specific events. 

By way of reaction against the mechanical view 
of the prophetic function, great stress is some- 
times laid on the fact, that the prophets were the 
statesmen and social reformers of Israel. But we 
must be careful not to let this truth obscure the 
essentially religious character of their mission. 



150 A Christian Apologetic 

They were, above all else, men in whom the con- 
sciousness of God and His righteousness was the 
one intense reality upon which all the relations of 
life hinged. The policy of the state was judged 
with reference to this ; the abuses of social life 
were denounced, because they outraged God ; 
formalism in religion was the subject of scathing 
rebuke, because God demanded a spiritual service. 
It is difficult for us to estimate the unique 
moral import of the prophets, and the place of 
pre-eminence that should be assigned them, just 
because their ethical insight was so unerring that 
its fruits have been incorporated into the inner- 
most structure of the world's morality. Their 
most striking innovations have become the very 
groundwork of our moral and religious conscious- 
ness. This ought not to blind us, however, to 
the distinctiveness and originality of the whole 
prophetic movement. Widely differing in tem- 
perament and environment, one characteristic 
binds the long succession of prophets into unity, 
and that, a trait, which at first neems strangely 
paradoxical. Although the sternest censors of 
contemporary morals — although overwhelmed 
with a sense of the disparity between the ideal 
and the actual, so that their rebuke of the 
prevalent unrighteousness rings habitually with 
the sharpest words of denunciation — they are, 
at the same time, one and all, filled with an 
irrepressible hope. Whenever the burden of woe 



The Witness of Prophecy 151 

seems to have reached its uttermost limit, sud- 
denly there bursts forth a note of praise and 
thanksgiving, as though God had already accom- 
plished His salvation. Truly, some wonder- 
ful vision must have been unfolded before 
them — the righteousness of God as revealed 
must have been touched with an unspeakable 
tenderness of love — to have thus assured their 
hearts in the midst of desolation, and made them 
the most consistent optimists that the world has 
ever seen. A consciousness of world - wide 
mission; an increasing sense of the nation^'s 
inadequacy to the task laid upon it; an in- 
destructible faith that God'*s own arm would 
bring salvation; out of these germs was de- 
veloped, with ever-growing clearness, the great 
Messianic hope which found its fruition in Jesus 
Christ. 

But before tracing the outline of this hope, as 
it appears in the writings of the prophets, it 
will be well to turn to the interpretation of 
prophecy that we find in the New Testament. 
Undoubtedly, at first sight, the usage of the 
Evangelists seems to give some colour of justifi- 
cation to the method upon which we have passed 
such severe strictures. This is not so evident 
in the words that are attributed to our Lord 
in the Gospels. These are entirely consonant 
with the broader view of prophecy suggested 
above. He claims, indeed, to fulfil perfectly 



152 A Christian Apologetic 

the Messianic hope of Israel. This He does, 
by implication, in assuming the title. Son of 
Man, and in asserting that His mission is to 
establish the Kingdom of God foretold by the 
prophets. And, again. He says plainly, "Ye 
search the Scriptures, because ye think that in 
them ye have eternal life ; and these are they 
which bear witness of Me." ^ Not only the 
Prophets, but the Law of Moses and the Psalms 
contain much that can find perfect fulfilment 
in Himself alone. ^ Moreover, He recognises the 
inner necessity that through suffering and death 
the world must be redeemed, and links this with 
the picture, drawn centuries before, of the " Man 
of Sorrows.**' ^ And in the synagogue at Nazareth, 
when He had read the passage from Isaiah 
descriptive of the acceptable year of the Lord, 
His words are explicit — " This day is this Scrip- 
ture fulfilled in your ears."^ But, in all these 
instances, the reference is to great, underlying 
principles of the Messianic Kingdom. The 
prophets are full of Christ, because visions of 
the coming salvation, in its broadest outlines, 
have been vouchsafed them. 

When, however, we turn to the comments of 
the Evangelists themselves, a somewhat different 
emphasis appears to be laid on the purely pre- 
dictive element in prophecy. Of course, many 

1 St. John V. 39, R.V. ^ g^^ L^ke xxiv. 44. 

8 St. Matt. xxvi. 54; St. Luke xxii. 37. ^ St. Luke iv. 21. 



The Witness of Prophecy 153 

will deny that we have any right to draw so 
sharp a line of distinction. They hold that the 
Gospels perfectly reflect Apostolic tradition ; the 
Twelve must have been familiar with our Lord's 
own exegesis of the Old Testament, as bearing 
on His work ; hence His authority may be 
claimed for all interpretations of prophecy that 
are found in the Gospel record. But, in view 
of the prevailing theories of the composite 
authorship of the Gospels, it is hardly wise 
to press this argument. In any event, it 
is useless to deny that those little particles 
of transition, denoting purpose, where to us 
result would have seemed more natural, present 
a serious stumbling - block to the modern 
mind. Not only do the Evangelists appear to 
regard prophecy as containing minute predic- 
tion, but it is as though the prophecy de- 
termined the event. When we look beneath 
the surface, however, we find that this usage 
illustrates some of the most distinctive char- 
acteristics of Hebrew thought. The accent 
always lies rather on the divine than the human. 
For instance, while man's moral responsibility 
is clearly taught throughout Scripture, passages 
can be cited, where the expression seems almost 
to deny man's freedom, in the interests of the 
counter-truth of the supreme sovereignty of God. 
The fulfilment of God's unchanging purpose 
swallows up, for the time, all consideration of 



154 A Christian Apologetic 

secondary causes. Thus each step in the life 
of Jesus is foreordained ; it is but the carrying 
out of some special aspect of the eternal counsel 
concerning the Messiah. Moreover, the Messiah 
was, for the Evangelists, bound up with the 
whole mission and experience of His people. 
The long history of the nation was incomplete 
in itself; it waited for its interpretation and 
its perfecting in Him. Accordingly, the phrase, 
" in order that it might be fulfilled,**^ has a 
deeper intention than merely to accredit words 
of prophecy ; it points out that the goal of 
IsraePs history has been reached ; what prior 
events dimly adumbrated, has found perfect 
realisation in Jesus Christ. 

It is questionable, whether the usage of 
the Evangelists implies that, in all cases, 
they regarded the Old Testament references 
as direct prophecy in the same sense as that 
adopted by modern Apologists, when they 
rest the weight of their argument upon explicit 
prediction. Upon any interpretation, based on 
the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, 
He is the unifying centre of the Old Testament 
as well as of the New. The Bible cannot be 
understood save in the light of His Person. 
As He is the Prophet, Priest, and King, 
toward whom the whole history of Israel looked 
forward, every human exemplar who exercised 
royal, priestly, or prophetic function, may well 



The Witness of Prophecy 155 

have foreshadowed some trait or characteristic 
which could find its complete fulfilment in Him 
alone. If it be true that Israel was divinely 
guided, that eternal principles of God's salvation 
found expression in the successive stages of 
its history, typical prophecy will, of necessity, 
be intertwined with every fibre of the national 
life. And for purposes of devotional edification, 
it is permissible to trace minute forecasts of 
the earthly life of Jesus, in many a passage, 
where a strictly scientific exegesis would fail 
to discover any Messianic reference. We must 
always bear in mind that the Gospels are written 
with a purely religious intent. Their method 
is not that of a critical history. And it is 
a totally different thing, to idealise, for instance, 
the sufferer of the twenty-second Psalm, and see 
foreshadowed there the supreme agony of the 
Cross, in order to drive home the mystery of 
vicarious atonement which has ever been the 
profoundest principle of self-sacrificing love; 
and, on the other hand, to claim, that because the 
Psalmist prophesied of Christ's death, therefore 
we have sure proof that God miraculously en- 
lightened his mind concerning the future. We 
have no interest in denying that the New Testa- 
ment writers may have been, to some extent, 
under the influence of those laws of rabbinic 
interpretation which now seem to us artificial. 
But the application of this principle of typical 



156 A Christian Apologetic 

prophecy helps to explain many of their refer- 
ences to the Old Testament, which otherwise 
might appear to be strained and unnatural. 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
sums up the distinctive character of the revela- 
tion of God through the prophets, in the phrase, 
" by divers portions and in divers manners.*" If 
we go to the Old Testament with any hope of 
finding there a portrait of the Messiah, con- 
sistent in all its parts, we are doomed to dis- 
appointment. Fragmentariness is the impression 
left on our minds, as we trace the thread of 
Messianic prophecy through its varying course. 
The hope of a mighty restitution to be wrought 
by God is the common possession of all ; but, 
in drawing the picture in detail, each prophet 
is largely influenced by the bent of his natural 
endowment, as also by the special conditions of 
the national life at the time of his ministry. 

In the earlier chapters of Isaiah, the symbols, 
under which the ideal is set forth, have a pre- 
dominantly political cast. A king shall reign 
in righteousness ; and so resplendent is his power, 
that all the terms of rhetoric are exhausted to 
describe his majesty and his glory. The kingdom 
that he shall establish is one of universal peace, 
centring in the Holy City ; " for out of Zion 
shall go forth the law, and the word of the 
Lord from Jerusalem.'"* This series of prophecies 
culminates in that outburst of praise, which rings 



The Witness of Prophecy 157 

forth a veritable Christmas anthem : " For unto 
us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given ; and 
the government shall be upon His shoulder : and 
His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 
Of the increase of His government and of peace 
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, 
and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to 
uphold it with judgment and with righteousness, 
from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the 
Lord of Hosts shall perform this."^ These are 
startling words, falling from the lips of a Hebrew; 
for they seem to describe the Messianic King 
as possessing all the attributes of the divine 
nature. But it makes no difference to our 
argument, whether Isaiah was, indeed, so carried 
by the Spirit beyond the limitations of 
Hebrew thought, as to catch a glimpse of 
the Christian mystery of Incarnation, or whether 
the terms are to be regarded as merely figurative, 
applying to the king as the vicegerent of God. 
It is enough, that Isaiah depicts the Messiah 
as perfecting the promises of the Covenant, and 
establishing the reign of Jehovah on earth, — the 
full and final revelation of God's mercy. 

Although these prophecies centre in the glorifi- 
cation of Jerusalem, signs are not wanting that 
the prophetic consciousness was capable of rising 
to the broadest universalism. Sometimes we 
^ Isa. ix. 6, 7, R.V. 



158 A Christian Apologetic 

can detect traces of national aggrandisement in 
the picture of the nations flocking to Jerusalem, 
and laying hold of the skirt of him who is a 
Jew, saying, " We will go with you ; for we have 
heard that God is with you.'*'^ But what can 
be more astonishing than when a prophet, of the 
most exclusive of the nations, declares concerning 
its bitterest enemies — " In that day shall Israel be 
the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a bless- 
ing in the midst of the earth : for that the Lord 
of Hosts hath blessed them, saying. Blessed be 
Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My 
hands, and Israel Mine inheritance **' ? ^ 

In Jeremiah, the prophecy concerning the 
King is touched with a deeper ethical signifi- 
cance; "this is His name whereby He shall 
be called. The Lord Our Righteousness/'^ 
His reign is to be instituted by a New Covenant, 
when the law shall no longer be written on tables 
of stone, but in the hearts of His people. The 
same promise finds place in Ezekiel, whose 
description of the Messianic Kingdom is set forth 
under the type of a restored Temple and re-estab- 
lished ritual worship ; " A new heart also will I give 
you, and a new spirit will I put within you : and 
I will take away the stony heart out of your 
flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.'' ^ 

It is a mistake to narrow down the Messianic 

1 Zech. viii. 23. ^ jg^. xix. 24, 25, R.V. 

3 Jer. xxiii. 6. * Ezek. xxxvi. 26. 



The Witness of Prophecy 159 

promise to those passages where distinct refer- 
ence is made to a king of the house of David. 
Parallel with these, stand many prophecies where 
the eye of the seer is turned upon the kingdom 
rather than the king. Here, again, the picture 
varies — now, the political aspect dominates, and 
the victory of Jerusalem over all her foes is the 
leading feature — then again, we have highly spirit- 
ualised conceptions of a realm where holiness 
finds perfect realisation. The beautiful passage 
in Isaiah (xxxii. 2), which has been appropriated 
by the Christian heart as wonderfully portraying 
the refuge afforded by Jesus Christ amidst the 
world's afflictions, more probably, in its primary 
signification, refers to the character that is to 
prevail universally in that great day of final 
regeneration. Then shall every man be as a 
hiding-place and a covert for his brother, "as 
rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow 
of a great rock in a weary land." 

It is an interesting indication of the influence 
exerted over the Messianic ideal by the fortunes 
of Israel's external history, that in the later pro- 
phets of the Chaldean period, up to the time of 
the exile, stress ceases to be laid on the coming 
of the King, and the interest begins to centre 
more exclusively in the People of God, as repre- 
sentative of Jehovah and the hope of the future. 
This tendency becomes paramount in the time of 
the exile ; and if Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is to be attri- 



160 A Christian Apologetic 

buted to this period, it is a striking fact that 
here, where prophecy reaches its culmination of 
spiritual insight, there is no mention whatsoever of 
the Messianic King. God has been testing His 
people in the furnace of affliction. All hopes of 
earthly dominion and of national pre-eminence 
seem forgotten. Now it is, that God drives 
home to the heart of the prophet the profoundest 
lesson of the Christ-life, and victory is seen to 
consist in utter self-sacrifice. A new hope dawns ; 
God's love is mighty to redeem all things, even 
what has been esteemed lowliest and most wretched 
in human life. It is of secondary importance, 
whether the figure of the Suffering Servant was 
originally intended to personify Israel, or was 
recognised by the prophet as pointing to an in- 
dividual Intercessor and Saviour. Strong argu- 
ments can be adduced for both conclusions. But 
as the prophetic intensity deepens, until it reaches 
its climax in the fifty-third chapter, it becomes 
increasingly difficult to believe that the sole refer- 
ence is to a priestly people. The eye of the pro- 
phet seems to be dwelling on the lineaments of a 
friend whom he already knows and loves. There 
is the indescribable touch of an ardent personal 
devotion, in the portraiture. The underlying 
principle, however, remains the same, in either 
case. Prophecy has now reached its fullest appre- 
hension of the nature of the divine salvation. 
Through suffering and death, love, divine and 



The Witness of Prophecy 161 

eternal, shall triumph over all obstacles and 
redeem the world. 

In subsequent prophecies, the Messianic King 
again appears, but now with the added attributes 
of the Priest, exercising mediatorial powers. It 
is, perhaps, doubtful whether the kingly and 
priestly functions are always conjoined in one 
person. Sometimes the conception seems to be 
rather that of a double Messiah, a Priest and a 
King, sitting together on the throne.^ But, in so 
far as this latter conception prevails, we have but 
another illustration of the way in which, through- 
out the whole course of Messianic prophecy, 
seemingly contradictory elements are placed in 
closest juxtaposition, with no attempt to me- 
diate between them or harmonise the opposition. 
It is as though different aspects of the Messianic 
salvation were flashed upon the eye of the pro- 
phet, but no power were given him to weld them 
into perfect unity. 

Cursory as our review of the subject has been, 

it is perhaps sufficient to give a hint as to the 

kind of argument which can be legitimately 

drawn from prophecy, to establish the claim of 

Jesus Christ to our allegiance. In formulating 

that argument, we cannot do better than to 

take a^ our point of departure a statement of 

Dr. Sanday, which clearly summarises the real 

significance of Hebrew prophecy : — " The dis- 

^ See Riehm's Messianic Prophecy^ p. 199 and note. 

L 



162 A Christian Apologetic 

tinguishing characteristic of the prophets, first 
of their speech and action and afterwards 
of their writings, was the firm and unwavering 
belief that they were instruments or organs 
of the Most High, and that the thoughts 
which arose in their minds about Him and His 
Will, and the commands and exhortations which 
they issued in His Name, really came at His 
prompting, and were really invested with His 
authority. There is no alternative between 
accepting this belief as true and regarding it 
as a product of mental disease and delusion. 
But to bring such a charge, not against a few 
individuals but against the whole line of pro- 
phets from Moses or Samuel to Malachi, is a step 
from which most of us would shrink. And the 
charge is refuted in advance by the contents of 
the prophecies themselves, which, if once we allow 
that there is a God, make those affirmations 
about Him which the world has pronounced to 
be the best and truest, and which it has taken as 
the centre of its beliefs to this day."' ^ 

We have thus, on the one hand, a hope 
grounded in divine revelation, which had in- 
spired Israel for centuries before the coming of 
Jesus Christ. And, as an answer to this hope, 
we find the one Man, whose character perfectly 
meets the moral ideal of the ages, accepting the 
prophecies as applicable to Himself, and claiming 
1 Sanday, Inspiration^ p. 394. 



The Witness of Prophecy 163 

to be the promised Messiah. Secular history 
bears wonderful testimony to the fact, that the 
fulness of times had come. The drawing of the 
world together within the vast unity of the 
Roman Empire — the prevalence of Greek culture, 
which, in manifold ways, subserved the preaching 
of a universal Gospel — were plainly purposed, 
each in its degree, to prepare the way of the 
Lord and make His paths straight. But the 
moral and spiritual preparation of Hebrew pro- 
phecy bears even more manifest marks of God's 
providential design. 

One obvious difficulty, which suggested itself 
from the first, was met long ago by St. Paul, 
in the course of his argument in the Epistle to 
the Romans. The nation, whose privilege it was 
to bear special testimony to the Messiah, failed, 
as a nation, to recognise the divine fulfilment, 
when it was at last vouchsafed. But however 
interpreted in the light of God'^s world-wide 
providence, this fact, at least, further illustrates 
the deep insight of the prophets, who gave warn- 
ing long before that it was only a righteous 
remnant, as the gleaning of an olive-tree, that 
should be saved. 

In Jesus Christ, all the paradoxes which meet 
us in the Messianic forecast of the prophets, 
find natural solution. He is Himself the Key 
necessary to the interpretation of prophecy. 
Without Him, the apparent contradictions must 



164 A Christian Apologetic 

have remained irreconcilable; we now behold 
them harmonised in the wonderful unity of His 
divine Person. 

Exception may be taken to this line of 
reasoning, on two widely different grounds. On 
the one hand, it is objected that the interpre- 
tation put upon prophecy is forced ; that 
we read Christ into the Old Testament, by an 
unjustifiable spiritualising of its language. On 
the other hand, it is urged that the very con- 
ception of the Christ was derived from prophecy, 
and that this product of Messianic dreams has 
been erroneously identified with the historical 
Jesus. 

By our assertion that Jesus Christ is the 
Key to prophecy, it might seem as though, in 
reality, we were begging the whole question; 
for are we not suiting the prophecy to the 
event, while professing to establish the event 
by means of the prophecy? But, plainly, if 
there be such a thing as prophecy, it cannot be 
perfectly understood until fulfilment has revealed 
the abundance of its content. We have been 
protesting against that construction of prophecy, 
which implies that the prophets themselves 
clearly foresaw the exact nature of the Mes- 
sianic salvation. Nor have we sought baldly 
to substantiate the life of Christ by means of 
prediction. Our aim has been rather to read 
in history some faint traces, at least, of tbose 



The Witness of Prophecy 165 

wonderful providential leadings, whereby God 
prepared the heart of His people for the fuller 
revelations of divine truth. We must needs 
begin with Jesus Christ, and read both past 
and future in the light that shines from His 
Person. 

If we are told that this is to spiritualise 
the Old Testament prophecies until they are 
made to bear any application we choose, it 
might be answered that, as no other general 
application than the one suggested has ever 
actually been made, the charge is sufficiently 
refuted by facts. But further, the word " spirit- 
ualise **' cannot be made a ground of reproach; 
for we have not been contending for that view 
of prophecy which conceives that minute details 
of future history are revealed by God. Great 
principles of truth and righteousness are revealed; 
and by God's Spirit the prophet is often enabled to 
forecast how these will work together to produce 
certain events. But, for the most part, these 
visions of the future are veiled under symbolic 
forms, borrowed from the immediate historic 
environment of the prophet. The deeper the 
prophet's spirituality, the less do temporary forms 
obscure the vision ; and when we reach the fifty- 
third chapter of Isaiah, the charge of " spiritual- 
ising'' falls away of itself. Meanwhile, to seek 
the kernel of abiding truth, concealed under 
the more carnal representations of regal power 



166 A Christian Apologetic 

and material prosperity, which characterise the 
prophetic picture of the Kingdom of God, is 
strictly in accord with the point of view adopted 
from the first. 

Orthodoxy first reads Christ into the Old 
Testament, and then triumphantly produces 
His presence there, as evidence of the truth 
of His divine claim — thus runs one critical 
objection. But the more prevalent theory as- 
sumes the very opposite ground, namely, that 
the Christ of the Gospels is the result of 
Messianic prophecy. The long-cherished expecta- 
tion among the Jews was fanned into a flame 
by St. John Baptist ; and when Jesus appeared, 
He was straightway endued, by the popular 
imagination, with the attributes of the tra- 
ditional Messiah. In the picture presented to 
us in the Gospels, we may catch faint glimpses 
of the historic Jesus ; but His true character is 
overlaid with conceptions drawn, not only from the 
older prophetic literature, but from the numerous 
apocalyptic writings of later origin. The upholders 
of this theorv are, however, straiorhtwav divided 
into two schools over the question, whether Jesus 
Himself shared in the delusion that He was pos- 
sessed of Messianic powers, or whether, on the 
other hand, the mistake is to be laid solely to the 
narrow and fanatical zeal of His followers. The 
finer instincts of reverence incline many to choose 
the latter alternative; but this, at a somewhat 



The Witness of Prophecy 167 

excessive cost of probability. Dr. Martineau goes 
so far as to deny that Jesus ever appropriated 
to Himself the title, Son of Man ; for, he 
maintains, this would have been to give coun- 
tenance to the crudest prejudices of contemporary 
Judaism. So extravagant a theory as this will 
find few advocates, for it involves the virtual 
confession that we have no trustworthy record 
whatever of the life and teaching of Jesus 
Christ. But even under the guise of more 
cautious criticism, the assumption that Jesus did 
not explicitly claim the prerogatives of the 
Messiah is purely arbitrary. Moreover, the 
scorn cast, by implication, on the Messianic 
hopes of Israel, as though they had been the 
chief factor in degrading the Evangelic tradition, 
argues a strange incapacity to appreciate the 
deep spirituality of the whole prophetic move- 
ment. The Old Covenant is, in effect, emptied 
of its divine content, and we can no longer 
regard it as, in any real sense, a preparation for 
the revelation of the Gospel. We have called the 
assumption arbitrary, because there is no shadow 
of direct evidence, that the character of Jesus 
Christ was developed by His biographers out 
of a mass of heterogeneous material. Even 
though we were to grant that all the separate 
traits of that character had been previously 
portrayed by the prophets, we have found that 
in their original context they are confused and 



168 A Christian Apologetic 

often contradictory. Meanwhile, the character 
of Jesus Christ is exquisitely harmonious : it is 
hard to see how the most purblind criticism can 
consider it to be a mere patchwork, constructed out 
of fragments of an ancient literature. His figure, 
as it stands before us in the Gospel story, leaves 
an impression of a distinct and powerful person- 
ality, which is the exact reverse of what could 
be expected from this hypothetical process of 
development. Familiar prophecies may have led 
the Evangelists to lay an added emphasis on 
certain incidents in our Lord's career. Certain 
apocalyptic sayings, attributed to Him, may 
have been coloured by the same influence. But 
the essential originality of the Gospel remains 
absolutely untouched by these admissions. No 
more improbable theory could well be pro- 
pounded than this, which attributes the character 
of Jesus Christ to the ingenuity of human in- 
ventiveness, provided with material drawn from 
the Old Testament Scripture. 

What, then, are we to conclude is the Apolo- 
getic value of the witness of prophecy ? Divorced 
from the moral and spiritual appeal of Christ 
to the heart and conscience, it proves nothing; 
there are no magical coincidences to startle the 
unbeliever, and compel acceptance of Jesus Christ. 
To a superficial view, there is reason in the plea, 
once put forward in the writer's presence by a 
thoughtful and cultivated man. " I cannot see,"' 



The Witness of Prophecy 169 

he said, " how the prophets can be adduced as 
witnessing to the truth of the Gospel. They 
were utterly mistaken in their expectations of 
a triumphant restoration of Israel ; and, so far 
from preparing the way for Christ, the very 
people to whom they prophesied were the first 
to reject Him.'** There is no answer to this, 
save once more to point out that the principles 
for which the prophets stood, and which have 
been triumphantly vindicated by the event, lie 
deep beneath the surface. Sometimes the Mes- 
sianic hope seems to waver and grow dim, or 
it is veiled under symbols which obscure its 
spiritual import. Only now and again, on 
mountain-tops of vision, does it flash forth with 
clearness, and plainly foreshow the love of God 
incarnate in Jesus Christ. But, in one form or 
another, it persists throughout the length of 
Israel's history, indestructible, giving an uplift 
and an inspiration, unparalleled in any other 
religion of the ancient world. And, in this line 
of prophecy, we have a link connecting the reve- 
lation of God in Jesus Christ with the great 
onward course of the religious evolution of the 
race. Without this link, the Gospel might seem 
sporadic and isolated, out of relation with all 
prior history. Now, it is seen to be the crown- 
ing glory of a long process of development, the 
culmination and fruition of Israel's special mission 
as the Chosen People of God. 



170 A Christian Apologetic 

Prophets foretold a King of righteousness; and, 
behold, He reigns. All nations were to be 
gathered into His Kingdom ; and the Catholic 
Church is spread over the whole earth. Bless- 
ings innumerable were to be the heritage of 
His servants; and the testimony of the saints 
assures us that the promise has been abun- 
dantly fulfilled. His triumph was prefigured, 
as strangely involved in the mystery of pain 
and suffering and death ; and, lo, the Cross 
of Christ has revealed the secret, whereby all 
things are made new and through love redeemed 
to God. 

This is sufficient to give pause, at least, to the 
man who believes that God's hand is in history, 
and that we may read there the traces of a 
revelation of the Eternal Will. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE SPIRIT 

We have sketched in outline a method of 
Christian Apology, which attempts to adapt it- 
self to the peculiar exigencies of the present age. 
The principles that govern the course of the 
argument, in the foregoing pages, should be kept 
distinct from the detailed application and illus- 
tration of those principles. It may well be that 
the latter are very imperfect and unconvincing, 
while the principles themselves are sound and 
irrefutable. In order that the general line of 
reasoning may stand out clearly, freed from all 
adventitious matter which might obscure its 
cogency, we will briefly summarise the main 
points of the argument that we have been 
pursuing. 

Recognising the avidity of the modern mind 
for facts, facts that are plain and indisputable, 
we made this our point of departure. We began 
with the character of Jesus Christ as portrayed 
in the Gospels, a character unrivalled in its beauty 
and the sway that it has gained over the hearts 
of men. The moral pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, 

171 



172 A Christian Apologetic 

and the unique influence that He has exercised in 
the subsequent history of the world, are facts 
which cannot be gainsaid. But facts demand an 
explanation, every effect presupposes a cause ; in 
the interests of reason, we are driven to correlate 
facts, and seek the general law that they exem- 
plify. Thus the character of Jesus Christ calls 
for the closest study, if we are to give account 
of so striking a phenomenon. 

In the course of this study, we are brought face 
to face with the divine claim that He put for- 
ward, and it seems impossible to disentangle 
this from the human perfection, which has won 
supreme allegiance from the conscience of man- 
kind. We can, indeed, ruthlessly cut away this 
claim ; but to do so, is to destroy utterly the 
integrity of our only source of information con- 
cerning the character of Jesus Christ ; and the 
figure left, after this process of excision, is thin 
and bloodless, emphatically not the Christ who 
has won the victories of which we are seeking 
explanation. 

We are next confronted with the alleged fact 
of the Resurrection. This event cannot be 
viewed in isolation, as a mere marvel, for it is 
closely allied to startling moral and spiritual 
phenomena. It is a turning-point in history, 
inasmuch as the faith that transformed the char- 
acter of the Apostles centred in its acceptance: 
and it was the keynote of the preaching that 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 173 

converted the world. Moreover, we find that 
nineteen hundred years have failed to produce a 
theory concerning this widespread belief, which 
in any degree adequately accounts for it, save 
on the supposition that the event actually 
occurred. 

In examining the records that chronicle the 
life of Jesus Christ, we find them as well attested 
by external evidence as other documents of rela- 
tively the same age. And, among the internal 
evidences of their trustworthiness, are some which 
appear to be of overwhelming force. The extra- 
ordinary consistency of the character of Jesus 
Christ, as set forth in the Four Gospels ; the air 
of verisimilitude in the history of the Passion; 
these are facts that vouch for the substantial 
accuracy of the records, and far out-weigh certain 
apparent discrepancies as to minor events. 

And finally, when we ask what relation Jesus 
Christ holds to the religious development of the 
pre-Christian world, whether there are signs of 
preparation for His coming ; we are met by 
the Messianic hope of the long line of Hebrew 
prophets, a hope that has found perfect fulfil- 
ment in Him. Moreover, Jesus Christ claimed the 
witness of prophecy as certifying to His divine 
claim. This fact, taken in conjunction with His 
acknowledged spiritual insight, becomes of signal 
moment in estimating the religious import of His 
life and character. 



174 A Christian Apologetic 

Again and again, in the course of our argu- 
ment, objections have been considered which 
seem to traverse our conclusions. But the force 
of the general line of reasoning is too strong to 
be seriously threatened. For, let it be borne in 
mind, we do not seek to prove anything whatso- 
ever to demonstration. This was clearly avowed 
from the first. We aim only at clearing away 
obstructions, and establishing a probability. If 
it be made evident, that one may believe in Jesus 
Christ without doing despite to reason, we have 
attained our end. For further certitude, and 
full assurance of the truth of the Gospel, we 
must have recourse to other methods than those 
of inductive reasoning. 

But although it be necessary, on occasion, to 
assume a somewhat dogmatic tone — and we hesi- 
tate to weaken the effectiveness of every positive 
statement, by constant qualification — nothing is 
gained in Apology by the slightest deflection 
from philosophic fairness. Very great difficulties 
remain, after the clearest presentment of the evi- 
dential argument. Whoever hopes to win a 
patient and sympathetic hearing to-day, must 
needs acknowledge these difficulties frankly and 
in all humility. Nothing so discredits the 
strength of the Christian position, in the eyes 
of an able antagonist, as ignoring the force of 
a counter-argument, which he knows has weight. 
There ought to be not only fearlessness but cor- 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 175 

diality, on the part of the Apologist, in facing 
facts^ from whatever quarter produced. He 
may never weary of the toil that meeting these 
facts entails. If they necessitate the readjust- 
ment of time-honoured arguments, let him not 
linger in making the concession. It cries shame 
on the Church, when Christian literature is less 
vital in its reactions than that which embodies 
the achievements of destructive criticism. Truth 
will prevail. The Christian advocate who is 
impatient, timorous, racked by over-anxiety con- 
cerning the issue, is guilty of a curious pre- 
sumption. His task is a solemn one, and ought 
indeed to cause heart -searching as to personal 
fitness. But the little battlements that we erect, 
against some sudden feint or onset of unbelief, 
are insignificant, in comparison with the splendid 
reserves of strength possessed by the great citadel 
of the Faith. Good temper, fearless honesty, 
reverence and quietude of spirit, these alone 
become him who ventures to plead the cause of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The difficulties that beset the believer are many 
and great; but so also are those which encom- 
pass the rationalistic position. Nothing could be 
more baseless than the notion that, if a man be 
rid of the Christian creed, he will no longer 
be haunted by scruples nor pressed hard by in- 
soluble problems. Mr. Browning has put much 
clever sophistry into the mouth of his worldly- 



176 A Christian Apologetic 

wise bishop; but the simple truth asserts itself, 
when he says : — 

^^ And now what are we ? unbelievers both^ 
Calm and complete^ determinately fixed 
To-day, to-morrow and for ever, pray ? 
You'll guarantee me that ? Not so, I think ! 
In no wise ! all weVe gained is, that belief. 
As unbelief before, shakes us by fits. 
Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's 
The gain ? how can we guard our unbelief. 
Make it bear fruit to us ? — the problem here. 
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
As old and new at once as nature's self. 
To rap and knock and enter in our soul. 
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, 
Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly. 
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are — 
This good God, — what He could do, if He would. 
Would, if He could — then must have done long since : 
If so, when, where, and how ? Some way must be, — 
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit 
Some sense, in which it might be, after all. 
Why not, ^The Way, the Truth, the Life' .? " * 

First of all, there is the moral elevation of Jesus 
Christ to be explained on naturalistic grounds. 
Shall we, or shall we not, take Him as our Master ? 
Every instinct of the heart prompts to the ac- 
knowledgment of His complete moral supremacy. 
But how reconcile this supremacy with His ante- 

^ Bishop Blougram^s Apology. 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 177 

cedents and environment? Whence came the 
catholicity of that teaching, which never grows 
old and never disappoints ? How account for the 
unrivalled influence that He has exerted over all 
sorts and conditions of men ? These questions 
press for an answer ; they will not be postponed. 
No theory of morals can have any consistency, no 
practical evangel can hope for effectiveness, until 
the mind has tried conclusions with this central 
problem, and a definite decision has been reached. 

Moreover, the character of Christ is hopelessly 
complicated, from the rationalistic point of view, 
with what must be esteemed the most gigantic 
blunder ever made by mortal man — the claim 
which He put forward that He is the Eternal Son 
of God. The purest and highest character is 
degraded by a blasphemous self-assertion that 
finds parallel only among the insane, and the 
lowest charlatans who have disgraced religious 
history. How has the unique influence of Christ 
for good maintained itself, thus handicapped ? If 
Christ made no such claim, how can we disentangle 
truth and fiction ? Are we not forced, in this 
case, to acknowledge that we know practically 
nothing of Him from whom the world has derived 
its noblest inspirations ? 

And then, it remains for us to account for the 
Resurrection story. The task seems easy, so long 
as we vaguely talk of myth and legend and excited 
visionaries ; but it grows harder when details are 

M 



178 A Christian Apologetic 

faced, and scientific precision is substituted for 
general allegations. At least, it is not work that 
one can undertake with a light heart — this robbing 
humanity of its Easter hope, the one ray of clear 
light cast on the awful mystery of death. And, 
after the most plausible explanations along 
naturalistic lines have been examined, a man 
must, in candour, confess that they are at the 
best extremely defective. One would like a little 
fuller assurance on so crucial a question. To be 
sure, the mind may be so biassed against the 
possibility of miracle, that any explanation will 
seem better than the acknowledgment of the fact ; 
but this strong prepossession has no logical value, 
it is essentially as irrational as the veriest supersti- 
tion, however congenial it may be to the passing 
temper of the age. 

The literary problems presented by the New 
Testament are replete with difficulty, from what- 
ever point of view they are approached. He 
alone can be sure that he has reached the ulti- 
mate solution, who resolutely shuts his eyes to 
one half of the evidence. The dogmatism of the 
Tiibingen school, for instance, may be placed 
over against that which characterised the older 
conservatism. Certain questions may be re- 
garded as substantially settled ; but the points, 
on which there is still room for legitimate 
diversity of opinion, are innumerable. Mean- 
while, the battle, on the whole, has not gone 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 179 

against the believer. The rationalistic critic 
is still troubled by as many questionings as his 
more conservative opponent. There are countless 
evidences of minute accuracy and veracity, which 
rise to confound those who attempt to invalidate 
the authority of the Christian records. 

And when a man has so far fortified his position 
that, on the whole, he deems it fairly impregnable, 
there still remains the practical question — what 
attitude shall he assume toward the Christian 
Church? It is the great conservator of morals; 
it elevates and inspires the mass of mankind; 
dare he set himself deliberately to wreck a faith 
that, in the main, performs so beneficent a service ? 
The man of coarser temperament, who prides 
himself on rugged straightforwardness, at all 
hazards, and is indifferent to the harm that 
accrues from uprooting wheat and tares together, 
may see his path plain before him. But the 
scruples that must harass one of finer discernment, 
reverent in the presence of those ideals which have 
lured men on to righteousness, are many and 
grievous. Of course, if honest conviction compels, 
we must follow this road however hard. But 
scepticism has no monopoly of honesty. Where 
arguments are nicely balanced, the charge of 
unscrupulousness had best be altogether aban- 
doned, let the final decision be what it may. But 
it is sheer sentimentality, to dwell upon the pathos 
of the Christian's ceaseless conflict with doubt, as 



180 A Christian Apologetic 

contrasted with the certainty in which the un- 
believer luxuriates. The contrast exists only in 
the imagination of an enfeebled faith. 

Whatever may be the larger interests subserved 
thereby, the fact is patent that we are placed, at 
present, amidst conditions that involve the intel- 
lectual side of religious truth in more or less of 
difficulty. The literary and historical evidence is 
not demonstrative, one way or the other. Our 
ultimate choice must depend largely on other 
considerations. It should serve to reconcile us, 
however, to this our fate, when we remember that 
intellectual demonstration and faith are incom- 
patible. If the latter be essential to a true 
spiritual development, the very imperfection of 
the formal evidential argument may be a dis- 
guised blessing. Indeed, the demand for com- 
plete logical proof involves an absurdity. It 
would require that each link of a long chain of 
evidence be manifestly flawless ; each assertion 
buttressed by an infallible authority that could 
not be gainsaid ; and at the end of the process, 
we should be no nearer a spiritual goal than at 
the beginning, the soul would not be advanced 
one step toward an experimental knowledge of 
God. It is impossible for us to know, ante- 
cedently, just what degree of clear intellectual 
conviction best consists with a full and free 
spiritual development. Therefore, it ill becomes 
us to repine, because much is left obscure, 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 181 

where the logical understanding craves demon- 
stration. 

We cleave, then, to the sunnier side of doubt. 
There can be no question that, if there be a God, 
no revelation of His character so satisfies the 
heart and conscience, as the good news heralded 
by Jesus Christ. It contains, for those who 
unreservedly surrender themselves to its dictates, 
a complete practical solution of the haunting 
questions—" Whence V' and " Whither V 

^^ . . . the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason^ solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it^ 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise." ^ 

But it has been objected that this is tanta- 
mount to believing a thing, simply because we 
wish it to be true. To shelter ourselves behind 
the insistent demands of the heart, and to 
account the inner satisfaction experienced, as 
evidence in favour of an objective revelation, 
is nothing but thinly- disguised cowardice. What 
right have we to suppose that the universe 
answers to our demands? We are affrighted 
in the presence of nature'*s order, which heeds 
not our cries and our tears ; therefore we put 
love at the heart of things, and say, " This 
must be true; it comforts and consoles me and 
gives me hope; therefore I will believe it.''*' 

This objection, however, though specious, is 
^ Browning's Death in the Desert. 



182 A Christian Apologetic 

thoroughly sophistical. In the first place, it is 
not optional with us, whether we will believe in 
the essential integrity of the universe; we must 
believe in it, in one form or another, or be 
reduced to intellectual confusion. The whole 
superstructure of science is built on the essential 
rationality of nature ; and we have as good 
ground for believing that conscience gives a true 
report of the moral constitution of things, as 
that our minds find an answering reality in the 
material universe. But, it is Jur from easy to 
hold consistently to this point of view. Instead 
of affirming that the attitude of faith toward 
a God of love is cowardly, it were nearer truth 
to say that herein consists the noblest heroism 
of the spirit. Faith is encompassed with every 
sort of obstacle. The onward march of the world, 
in many of its aspects, seems cruelly indifferent 
to the interests of man. What of the hard 
struggle, in which the strong alone survive; the 
pain and suffering, scattered broadcast, with no 
evident sign of just apportionment; the inexor- 
able severity of the destructive forces of nature .? — 
it sometimes seems as though, verily, it were 
easier to believe in malevolence than love. But 
there are countervailing truths; there is beauty 
lavished in profusion over the face of nature; 
there is the keen joy of living, over against the 
pain ; there is the vision of righteousness, stirring 
us to strenuous endeavour; there are the count- 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 183 

less compensations of love and the enthusiasm of 
work. The soul is left to choose the category 
according to which it will construe the world. 
Shall it be the good or the bad ? Shall it be 
hopeful or despairing.? Shall we believe in love 
or hate.? In just this choice lies the souFs pro- 
bation. And who will say that the brave soul 
must choose the darker alternative ? Despera- 
tion is not a synonym for courage. It is surely 
as noble to cast in one's lot with the highest, 
as to accept sadly the lowest conceivable inter- 
pretation of life. It is as brave to look forward 
cheerfully, to hope amidst the darkness, as to be 
filled with gloomy forecasts and believe that 
evil reigns. 

And so with that revelation of eternal love 
that is proclaimed in Jesus Christ. If the Gos- 
pel be true, a light is cast upon the darkest 
problems, which dispels the gloom, and makes 
life doubly worth the living. It is not the 
instinct of cowardice that drives us to Him ; 
it is manly eagerness to make the most of 
life. We must not contravene reason or con- 
science, for these are lights from God. But 
reason is found to oppose no insuperable bar- 
riers — nay, her finer intuitions are strikingly 
consonant with the deeper truths of the Gospel. 
Conscience finds its fullest satisfaction in the 
ideal presented in Jesus Christ. To hail Him, 
then, as Master, is not the last resort of feeble 



184 A Christian Ajjologetic 

souls; it is to put the highest value on life, to 
dare all for the noblest ends, to stake one'*s soul 
on the supremacy of love. 

The prominence that has been given to the 
doctrine of probability may seem inconsistent 
with the full assurance of the true Christian 
believer. If proof falls short of demonstration, 
is it possible for us to emulate that splendid 
confidence that has always marked effective 
religious achievement? The very question re- 
veals a certain confusion of thought. There 
is a path of demonstration, and the saints have 
always walked in it; but it lies, of necessity, 
far away from those scholastic lines of argument 
that are the subject-matter of formal Evidences. 
And yet, although Christian Apology is not im- 
mediately concerned with other than logical pro- 
cesses, it must always prove itself comparatively 
futile, unless, indirectly, it guides toward surer 
grounds of certitude than lie within its own 
proper sphere. 

The first step along the path of spiritual 
demonstration is faith in the message of Christ, 
stirring to action. The emprise is not a rash 
one; it involves no intellectual disloyalty; for 
it commits to the acceptance of no doctrinal 
propositions. We all recognise that life is a 
somewhat difficult and complicated matter, at 
best; the network of social relationships yields 
a harvest of joy or sorrow, according to the 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 185 

moral reaction of the individual. We long 
for a guiding clue, some principle of uni- 
versal application that shall assure success. The 
message of Christ, as bearing on this practical 
problem, is worthy at least of serious considera- 
tion ; and there is no way in which we can test 
it, save by putting it into practice. If that 
message were primarily a series of abstract 
propositions about God, it would be unreason- 
able to ask such a venture of faith, without 
previously justifying the demand by an exhaus- 
tive defence of Christ's authority. But, however 
the truth has been overlaid, the aim of the 
Gospel is, plainly, to lead men to an experi- 
mental knowledge of the life of God ; and only 
secondarily, by way of inference, to inculcate 
what may be strictly termed a theological 
doctrine. We have, then, a perfect right to 
put Christ's teaching to the test of experience, 
even though we are, at the time, uncertain 
about all theoretic deductions from the Gospel 
narrative. For any man who will do this 
whole-heartedly, accepting no conventional in- 
terpretations, but seeking knowledge at its 
source, striking no compromise with conscience, 
but unreservedly surrendering himself to the 
spirit of the Master, there is sure to come a 
revelation of the originality and perennial power 
of the Gospel. 

The distinctive characteristic of the ethics of 



186 A Christian Apologetic 

Christ consists in the place assigned to love, 
and in the novel interpretations that are put 
upon the word. In the Christian view, virtues 
cease to be virtues, save as irradiated and 
transformed by love. Justice, prudence, temper- 
ance, fortitude — these are not strong to stand 
alone. When they are but the fruit of a nicely- 
calculated selfishness, they develop a character 
more impervious to the influences of divine 
grace than that of the most abandoned sinner. 
While the centre is self^ it is impossible that 
life should be other than immoral, that is, in 
direct antagonism to the Will of God. More 
particularly, it is only through love that we can 
interpret the true meaning of those virtues, which 
were first brought into prominence by the Gos- 
pel — humility, meekness, non-resistance. These 
graces must seem, not only unattractive, but 
positively repellent, save to those who are ad- 
mitted to the secret of the great mystery of love. 
And, indeed, they not only seem unattractive, 
they are of the nature of vice rather than virtue, 
unless a positive element is infused into them by 
the fire of a self-abandoning service of others. 

Herein, perhaps, lies the explanation why so 
many of the modern advocates of non-resistance 
seem to propound such paradoxical and imprac- 
ticable theories. Non-resistance, in and of itself, 
is as impotent as any other empty negative. 
Logically, it is a mere abstraction, landing us 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 187 

in nihilism and anarchy. It has value only as 
breaking down barriers, so that the ardour of 
self-sacrificing devotion may have free course, 
binding man to man in a fellowship pregnant 
with spiritual blessing. Until the impulse of 
love is strong enough to enter in and take com- 
plete possession, society, as a whole, cannot forego 
the use of safeguards against the unlicensed 
passions of evil men. But this does not preclude 
the individual from the practice of non-resistance ; 
and he is bound, as a follower of Christ, to prac- 
tise it, just in so far as the impulse of love 
within him is strong to use every opportunity 
of serving his fellows. If he resists not, yet 
fails to love, he will simply be crushed; but, 
with love, he will gain kingly place and power, 
though his throne, like that of his Master, be 
a cross. 

We must guard ourselves, however, against one 
serious misconception. The Gospel of Jesus 
Christ has sometimes been called supra-moral — 
if, indeed, this term be not self-contradictory — 
in that it seems but little concerned with the 
mere struggle for righteousness, as compared 
with its ceaseless inculcation of the duty of 
loving. It is pointed out that Christ held con- 
stant converse with sinners, yet waged no direct 
warfare against lust, injustice, and other flagrant 
breaches of the moral law, while His scathing 
condemnation was reserved for those who were 



188 A Christian Aj^ologetic 

outwardly irreproachable in conduct. The mis- 
take here is due to a false construction put upon 
the meaning of love, as though it consisted chiefly 
in tender sympathy with all men. Sympathy 
opens the door through which love goes forth to 
do its work ; but, standing alone, sympathy is 
always in danger of evaporating into mere senti- 
mentality. True love seeks actively the highest 
good of the loved one, and this highest good 
is attainable only along the path of a whole- 
hearted consecration to righteousness. But, as 
already pointed out, righteousness must not be 
confounded with a formal morality; virtues w^hich 
are not rooted in love, cease to bear the stamp 
of virtue to love's keen insight. Hence, to 
Christ, the root of all sin is pride; this alone 
shuts the heart absolutely to the access of love. 

When once the motive power of the Gospel 
has taken full possession, the joyful mystery 
of the Cross begins to reveal itself. The 
Christian temj^er is misunderstood, when the 
prominence assigned to self-sacrifice seems to 
cast a gloom over the demands of the Gospel. 
In its purest form, Christianity combines the 
joyousness of the Greek mood, with the strenu- 
ous sense of duty that distinguished the Hebrew- 
character. Only, the Christian road to joy lies 
through a different country from that of egoistic 
self-assertion. Sacrifice is its half-way house ; 
but the goal is not reached until self-abnegation 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 189 

becomes sweet with spiritual compensations, so 
that dolour is transformed into delight. It is 
only as marking progress toward Hfe, not death, 
that sacrifice is lovely. Gladness is essential to 
the health and soundness of self-surrender. 

This, the spirit of the Gospel, finds an 
illustration in that most winning of saints, 
Francis of Assisi. Good-cheer rings through 
all his words and acts ; austerity is full of 
gracious sweetness ; poverty has become the 
most beautiful of brides; the whole earth is 
overflowing with God's goodness, so that the 
humblest living creatures are like brothers and 
sisters, and in this boundless fellowship he 
tastes the exhilaration of perpetual childhood. 
The outward garb of Christian service differs 
widely from age to age, but the spirit abides. 
And in this abandonment of self-sacrificing 
love, wherein all joy is consummated, God sets 
His seal on the truth enunciated by Jesus 
Christ, that man must die in order that he may 
live. 

Where love holds undisputed sway, it suc- 
ceeds. In so far as we are conformed to 
the precepts of Jesus Christ, they prove the 
solvent of all practical difficulties; life, which 
before seemed intractable, yields to this mode 
of approach, and becomes replete with new 
interests and satisfactions. And when faith in 
Christ's teaching has carried us thus far, and 



190 A Christian Apologetic 

we have surrendered ourselves to that love 
which He inculcates, there begins to spring up 
in our hearts a faith in Him which lends 
self-evidencing power to all His words con- 
cerning spiritual verities. 

This demonstration of the spirit is, from its 
very nature, an individual possession. It cannot 
be imparted by one man to another through 
the medium of words. Words, indeed, are im- 
potent even to describe with adequacy any such 
transcendent experience. But to him who has 
once known this certitude, it is the sufficient 
foundation on which to erect a strong and 
confident religious life. 

When faith has thus become the dominant 
influence, and Jesus Christ is known not merely 
according to the flesh, but after the spirit, it 
is but natural that a change should pass upon 
many facts connected with Christian Evidences, 
and that these should appear in a new light 
and endued with fresh significance. Doubtless 
this exposes the Christian to the charge of pre- 
judice; and he may seem, at first sight, less 
fair-minded than the man who acknowledges 
the claim of no inner witness. But we have 
already found that this charge of bias is a 
sword with two edges. Initial unbelief is a 
prepossession as much as faith. And to him 
who accepts the validity of spiritual experience, 
sympathy bred by such experience will seem a 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 191 

surer path to just conclusions, than the mood 
of cold indifference or active hostility. 

A case in point, is the argument for the truth 
of the Gospel, drawn from the history of the 
Church and its triumphs. No series of facts, 
falling within the province of Christian Evidences, 
lends itself to more widely differing interpreta- 
tions. On the one hand, it is possible to lay the 
accent on the credulity and superstition, the 
shortcomings and the cruelty, which have dis- 
graced the Church. While granting that it has 
performed a useful service, in many respects, 
these conspicuous evils may loom so large that 
they seemingly stultify any claim to divine origin 
or heavenly mission. On the other hand, he who 
has himself tested the Gospel, and found it a 
savour of life unto life, will be more impressed 
with the evidence that the Church affords of an 
indestructible vitality, than with the imperfec- 
tions incident to all institutions in which the 
frailty of humanity has share. Here is a Society 
in which personal devotion to Jesus Christ has 
been the centre of an unfailing enthusiasm ; this 
has been the leaven that has preserved its 
essential soundness amidst all kinds of corrup- 
tion. Its charter is the law of love : and griev- 
ously as this has been overlaid and forgotten 
at times, it has again and again reasserted itself, 
and proved the perennial source of moral and 
spiritual reformation. It is not so surprising 



192 A Christian Apologetic 

that the Church should have survived outward 
persecutions and the hostihty of the world ; but 
that it should have triumphed over the treachery 
of its friends and the disloyalty of its avowed 
servants, is truly cause for wonderment. He who 
has felt within himself the power of the Gospel 
can interpret the Church's life from the record of 
his own experience ; to others, it must remain an 
enigma. To him its history wonderfully fulfils 
Chrisfs promise ; the gates of hell have not pre- 
vailed against it ; it is instinct with a divine life 
which assures an ever-enlarging victory. But 
without faith this hope is meaningless, and the 
mighty prophecies of a world-wide kingdom of 
righteousness seem but an empty dream. 

It is true, that in reasoning with the unbe- 
liever appeal cannot always be made to such 
spiritual postulates. But our Apologetic will 
have force, in proportion to the clearness with 
which w^e ourselves apprehend these deeper truths 
of the Spirit. They should ever form the back- 
ground of our thought, for thus alone can we 
be saved from confusion, amidst the multiplicity 
of critical details, which constantly threaten to 
obscure the larger issues that are at stake. 

If we are tempted to grow impatient, because 
formal Apologetics remain imperfect, and the 
argument never reaches the finality that we crave, 
let it be remembered that this is inevitable from 
the nature of the subject. Apology is relative to 



The Demonstration of the Spirit 193 

ever-shifting needs. Certain fundamental specu- 
lative difficulties, inherent in the theme itself, 
abide from age to age. But man*'s intellectual 
horizon broadens, the increase of knowledge 
renders many an old argument out of date, and 
thus the logical form of Christian Apology, in 
many of its aspects, must of necessity continue 
to be partial, temporary, tentative. If we are 
possessed with a passion for systematic complete- 
ness, we must look elsewhere than to Apologetics 
for its satisfaction. 



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THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN 
OTHER LANDS. By the Rev. H. W. 
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THE HISTORY OF THE REFOR- 
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THE CHURCH OF THE EARLY 
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HILDEBRAND AND HIS TIMES. 

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B.D. 
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Poole, M.A. 
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the Rev. Professor H. M. Gwatkin, 

M.A. 



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8 



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With 



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Illustrations. 55. 
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the Contemporary Prophets. With 

a Map and Illustrations. 55. 
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Contemporary Prophets. With 

Illustrations. 5J. 



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The Gospels. 
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5J. 



Life and Words 
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OF Christ. 

lOJ. 



Life and Epistles of St. Paul. 
With Maps and Illustrations. 
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St. Peter to Revelation. With 
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LIFE AND WORDS OF CHRIST. 

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Hall.— Works by the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop 
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Hallowing of Sorrow. By E. R. With a Preface by H. S. 
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Hanbury - Tracy. — FAITH AND PROGRESS. Sermons 

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THE PERSONAL LIFE OF THE CLERGY. By the Rev. Arthur 
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THE MINISTRY OF CONVERSION. By the Rev. A. J. Mason. D.D., 
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PATRISTIC STUDY. By the Rev. H. B. Swete. D.D., Regius Pro- 
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FOREIGN MISSIONS. By the Right Rev. H. H. Montgomery, D.D., 
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A2 



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GOD'S CITY AND THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM. Crown 

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PARADOXES OF THE LOVE OF GOD, especially as they are seen in 
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ONE BORN OF THE SPIRIT ; or, the Unification of our Life in God. 
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Hutton.— THE SOUL HERE AND HEREAFTER. By the 
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HOLY MATRIMONY. Crown ^vo. 5^. [The Oxford Library of 
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THE CHRISTIAN HOME. Crown Svo. 31. 6d. 

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THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY 
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Lear. — Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear. 

FOR DAYS AND YEARS. A book containing a Text. Short Reading, 
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FIVE MINUTES. Daily Readings of Poetry. i6mo. 3J. 6d. Also a 
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WEARINESS. A Book for the Languid and Lonely. Large Type. 
Small Svo. 55. 

CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHIES. Nine Vols. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d, each. 

The Revival of Priestly Life 



Madame Louise de France, 
Daughter of Louis xv., known 
also as the Mother T^r^se de 
St. Augustin. 

A Dominican Artist : a Sketch of 
the Life of the Rev. Pere Besson, 
of the Order of St. Dominic. 

Henri Perreyve. By Pere 
Gratry. 

St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and 
Prince of Geneva. 



in the Seventeenth Century 
in France. 

A Christian Painter of the 
Nineteenth Century. 

bossuet and his contempora- 
RIES. 

F^NELON, Archbishop of Cam- 

BRAI. 

Henri Dominique Lacordaire. 
\coniinued. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 13 

Lear. — Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear.— 
continued, 

DEVOTIONAL WORKS. Edited by H. L. Sidney Lear. New and 
Uniform Editions, Nine Vols. i6mo. 2s. net each. 



F^nelon's Spiritual Letters to 

Men. 
F^nelon's Spiritual Letters to 
Women. 

A Selection from the Spiritual 
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Sales. Also Cheap Edition^ ^zmOy 
6d. cloth limp ; is. cloth boards. 

The Spirit of St. Francis de 
Sales. 



The Hidden Life of the Soul. 
The Light of the Conscience. 
Also Cheap Edition, %2.mo^ 6d, 
cloth limp : \s. cloth boards. 
Self-Renunciation. From the 

French. 
St. Francis de Sales' Of the 

Love of God. 
Selections from Pascal's 
'Thoughts.' 



Lepine.— THE MINISTERS OF JESUS CHRIST. By J. 

Foster Lepine, Vicar of Lamorbey, Kent. Parts i. and ii. Crown 
Svo. 55. each, 

Liddon.— Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D.,D.C.L.,LL.D. 

SERMONS ON SOME WORDS OF ST. PAUL. Crown Svo. 5^. 

SERMONS PREACHED ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS, 1860-1889. 
Crown Svo. 55. 

CLERICAL LIFE AND WORK: Sermons. Crown Svo, 51. 

ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES : Lectures on Buddhism— Lectures on the 
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EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE 
ROMANS. Svo, 14s. 

EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF ST. PAUL'S FIRST EPISTLE 
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SERMONS ON OLD TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. CrownSvo. 5s. 

SERMONS ON SOME WORDS OF CHRIST. Crown Svo. 55. 

THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. 
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ADVENT IN ST. PAUL'S. Crown Svo, 5^. 

CHRISTMASTIDE IN ST. PAUL'S. Crown Svo. ss, 

PASSIONTIDE SERMONS. Crown Svo. 5s. 

EASTER IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Resurrec- 
tion of our Lord. Two Vols, Crown Svo. 35. 6d. each. Cheap 
Edition in one Volume. Crown Svo, 55, 

[continued. 



14 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Liddon.— Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., 

L L. D . — contin ued, 

SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
OXFORD. Two Vols. Crown Svo. y. 6d. each. Cheap Edition in 
one Volume* Crown Svo. 55. 

THE MAGNIFICAT. Sermons in St. Paul's. Crown Svo. zs. net. 

SOME ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. Lent Lectures. Small Svo. 
2S. net. {The Crown Svo Edition (55.) may still be had.] 

SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 

Lnckock. — Works by HERBERT MORTIMER LUCKOCK, D.D., 
Dean of Lichfield. 

THE SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FOUR GOSPELS. 

Crown Svo. 6s. 

AFTER DEATH. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive 
Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their Relationship 
to the Living. Crown Svo. 3J, ?iet. 

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE BETWEEN DEATH AND 
JUDGMENT. Being a Sequel to After Death. Crown Svo. ^s. net. 

FOOTPRINTS OF THE SON OF MAN, as traced by St. Mark. Being 
Eighty Portions for Private Study, Family Reading, and Instruction 
in Church. Crown Svo. ^s. net. 

FOOTPRINTS OF THE APOSTLES, as traced by St. Luke in the 
Acts. Being Sixty Portions for Private Study, and Instruction in 
Church. A Sequel to ' Footprints of the Son of Man, as traced by 
St. Mark.' Two Vols. Crown Svo. 12s. 

THE DIVINE LITURGY. Being the Order for Holy Communion, 
Historically, Doctrinally, and Devotionally set forth, in Fifty Portions. 
Crown^Svo. ^s. net. 

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
PRAYER. The Anglican Reform — The Puritan Innovations — The 
Elizabethan Reaction — The Caroline Settlement. With Appendices. 
Crown Svo. 3^. 7tet. 

THE BISHOPS IN THE TOWER. A Record of Stirring Events 
affecting the Church and Nonconformists from the Restoration to the 
Revolution. Crown Svo. 3^. net. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. . 15 

Lyra Germanica : Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals 

of the Christian Year. First Series. i6mo, with red borders, 2.s. net. 

MacColL— Works by the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, D.D., Canon 
Residentiary of Ripon. 

THE REFORMATION SETTLEMENT : Examined in the Light of 
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Crown 8vo. 3J. 6d. net. 

CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE AND MORALS. 
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LIFE HERE AND HEREAFTER : Sermons. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 

Marriage Addresses and Marriage Hymns. By the Bishop of 
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OF Rochester, the Dean of Norwich, Archdeacon Sinclair, 
Canon Duckworth, Canon Newbolt, Canon Knox Little, 
Canon Rawnsley, the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, D.D., the Rev. 
W. Allen Whit worth, etc. Edited by the Rev. O. P. Wardell- 
Yerburgh, M.A., Vicar of the Abbey Church of St. Mary, Tewkesbury. 
Crown Svo. -55. 

Mason.— Works by A.J. Mason, D.D., Lady Margaret's Reader 

in Divinity in the University of Cambridge and Canon of Canterbury. 
PURGATORY; THE STATE OF THE FAITHFUL DEAD; 

INVOCATION OF SAINTS. Three Lectures. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 

net, 
THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. A Manual of Christian Doctrine. 

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THE RELATION OF CONFIRMATION TO BAPTISM. As taught 

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Maturin. — Works by the Rev. B. W. Maturin. 

SOME PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF THE SPIRITUAL 
LIFE. Crown Svo. 4?. 6d. 

PRACTICAL STUDIES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 

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Medd.~THE PRIEST TO THE ALTAR ; or, Aids to the 
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English Use of Sarum. By Peter Goldsmith Medd, M.A., Canon 
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Meyrick.~THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF 

England on the Holy Communion Restated as a Guide at the Present 
Time. By the Rev. F. Meyrick, M.A. Crown Svo. 4J. 6d. 

Monro.— SACRED ALLEGORIES. By Rev. Edward Monro. 

Complete Edition in one Volume^ with Illustrationst Crown Svo» 
3i. 6d. net. 



i6 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Mortimer.—Works by the Rev. A. G. Mortimer, D.D., Rector 

of St. Mark's, Philadelphia. 

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE: An Historical and Theological 
Investigation of the Sacrificial Conception of the Holy Eucharist in the 
Christian Church. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 

CATHOLIC FAITH AND PRACTICE: A Manual of Theology. Two 
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JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION : Thirty Addresses for Good 
Friday and Easter. Crown 8vo, ^s. 

HELPS TO MEDITATION : Sketches for Every Day in the Year. 
Vol. I. Advent to Trinity. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
Vol. II. Trinity to Advent. Svo. ys. 6d. 

STORIES FROM GENESIS : Sermons for Children. CrownSvo. 4s. 

THE LAWS OF HAPPINESS; or, The Beatitudes as teaching our 
Duty to God, Self, and our Neighbour. iSmo. 2s. 

THE LAWS OF PENITENCE: Addresses on the Words of our Lord 
from the Cross. i6mo. is. 6d. 

SERMONS IN MINIATURE FOR EXTEMPORE PREACHERS: 
Sketches for Every Sunday and Holy Day of the Christian Year. 
Crown Svo. 6s. 

NOTES ON THE SEVEN PENITENTIAL PSALMS, chiefly from 

Patristic Sources. Small Svo. ^s. 6d. 

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF OUR MOST HOLY REDEEMER: 
with Meditations on some Scenes in His Passion. Crown Svo. 55. 

LEARN OF JESUS CHRIST TO DIE : Addresses on the Words of our 
Lord from the Cross, taken as teaching the way of Preparation for 
Death. iSmo. 2s. 

Mozley.— Works by J. B. MozLEY, D.D., late Canon of Christ 
Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 

ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL. Two Vols, Svo, 
24s. 

EIGHT LECTURES ON MIRACLES. Being the Bampton Lectures 
for 1865. Crown Svo. 3-5". net. 

RULING IDEAS IN EARLY AGES AND THEIR RELATION 
TO OLD TESTAMENT FAITH. Svo. 6s. 

SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
OXFORD, and on Various Occasions. Crown Svo. 35. nel. 

SERMONS, PAROCHIAL AND OCCASIONAL. Crown Svo. 
3^. net. 

A REVIEW OF THE BAPTISMAL CONTROVERSY. Crown Svo. 
3J. n€t. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 17 

Newbolt.— Works by the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon 
and Chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral. 

APOSTLES OF THE LORD : being Six Lectures on Pastoral Theo- 
logy, delivered in the Divinity School, Cambridge, Lent Term, 1901. 
Crown 8vo, 3J. 6d. net, 

RELIGION. Crown Svo. ss. (The Oxford Library of Practical 

Theology. ) 
THE DIAL OF PRAYER : being Devotions for Every Hour. Smal/ 

Svo. 2S. 

WORDS OF EXHORTATION. Sermons Preached at St. Paul's and 

elsewhere. Crown Svo. ^s. net, 
PENITENCE AND PEACE: being Addresses on the 51st and 23rd 

Psalms. Crown Svo. 2J, net. 
PRIESTLY IDEALS ; being a Course of Practical Lectures delivered in 

St. Paul's Cathedral to ' Our Society ' and other Clergy, in Lent, 1898. 

Crown Svo. 35. 6d. 
THE GOSPEL OF EXPERIENCE ; or, the Witness of Human Life 

to the truth of Revelation. Being the Boyle Lectures for 1895. 

Crown Svo. 55. 
COUNSELS OF FAITH AND PRACTICE: being Sermons preached 

on various occasions. Crown Svo, 5J. 
SPECULUM SACERDOTUM ; or, the Divine Model of the Priestly 

Life. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d, 
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. Being Ten Addresses bearing on 

the Spiritual Life. Crown Svo, 2s, net, 
THE MAN OF GOD. Small Svo, u. 6^. 
THE PRAYER BOOK : Its Voice and Teaching. Crown Svo. 2j. net. 

Newman. — Works by John Henry Newman, B.D., sometime 
Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. 

LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN HENRY NEW- 
MAN DURING HIS LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH. With 
a brief Autobiography. Edited, at Cardinal Newman's request, by 
Anne Mozley. 2 vols. Crown Svo. js, 

PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS. Eight Vols. Crown Zvo. 
3^. 6d. each, 

SELECTION, ADAPTED TO THE SEASONS OF THE ECCLE- 
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Svo, 3J. 6d, 

FIFTEEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 
OF OXFORD. Crown Svo, ss. 6d. 

SERMONS BEARING UPON SUBJECTS OF THE DAY. Crown 
Svo, 3J. 6d, 

LECTURES ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. Crown 
Svo, 31. 6d. 

*«* A Complete List of Cardinal Newman's Works can be had on Application. 



i8 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Osborne. — Works by Edward Osborne, Mission Priest of the 
Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford. 

THE CHILDREN'S SAVIOUR. Instructions to Children on the Life 
of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Illustrated. i6mo. 2j. net. 

THE SAVIOUR KING. Instructions to Children on Old Testament 
Types and Illustrations of the Life of Christ. Illustrated. i6mo. zs. net, 

THE CHILDREN'S FAITH. Instructions to Children on the Apostles' 
Creed. Illustrated. i6mo. 2j. net. 

Ottley.— ASPECTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: being the 
Bampton Lectures for 1897. By Robert Lawrence Ottley, M.A., 
Vicar of Winterbourne Bassett, Wilts ; sometime Principal of the 
Pusey House. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 

Oxford (The) Library of Practical Theology.— Edited by the 

Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul's, 
and the Rev. Darv^ell Stone, M.A., Principal of the Missionary 
College, Dorchester. Crown Svo, 51. each. 

RELIGION. By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and 
Chancellor of St, Paul's. [Ready. 

HOLY BAPTISM. By the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Principal of 
the Missionary College, Dorchester. [Ready. 

CONFIRMATION. By the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop 

of Vermont. [Ready, 

THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. By 

the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., Fellow of St. John Baptist's 

Oxford. [Ready. 

HOLY MATRIMONY. By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 

Canon of Worcester. [Ready. 

THE INCARNATION. By the Rev. H. V. S. EcK, M.A., St. 

Andrew's, Bethnal Green. [Ready. 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. By the Right Rev. E. T. Churton, D.D., 

formerly Bishop of Nassau. [Ready. 

PRAYER. By the Rev. Arthur John Worlledge, M.A., Canon and 

Chancellor of Truro. [Ready. 

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION. By the Rev. Leighton Pullan, 

M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. [In the press, 

SUNDAY. By the Rev. W. B. Trevelyan, M.A., Vicar of St. 

Matthew's, Westminster. [In preparation. 

THE BIBLE. By the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Joint Editor of 

the Series. [In preparation. 

THE CREEDS. By the Rev. A. G. Mortimer, D.D., Rector of 

St. Mark's, Philadelphia. [In preparation. 

THE CHURCH CATECHISM THE CHRISTIAN'S MANUAL. 

By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Joint Editor of the Series. 

[In preparation. 

[continued. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 



19 



Oxford (The) Library of Practical Th^ologj,— continued, 

RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL. By the Rev. Walter Howard 
Frere, M.A., Superior of the Community of the Resurrection, 
Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester. {^In preparation. 

HOLY ORDERS. By the Rev. A. R. Whitham, M.A., Principal of 

[In preparation. 
By the Rev. E. 



Culham College, Abingdon. 
VISITATION OF THE SICK. 

St. Alban's, Holborn. 
CHURCH WORK. By the 

Prebendary of St. Paul's. 
DEVOTIONAL BOOKS. By the 

and Treasurer of Lichfield. 



Rev. • Bernard 



F. Russell, M.A., 

\In preparation. 

Reynolds, M.A., 

\In preparation. 

Rev. Charles Bodington, Canon 

[/« preparation. 

Paget.-— Works by FRANCIS PAGET, D.D., Lord Bishop of Oxford. 

CHRIST THE WAY : Four Addresses given at a Meeting of School- 
masters and others at Haileybury. Crown 8vo. is. 6d. net. 

STUDIES IN THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: Sermons. With an 
Introductory Essay. Crown Svo. 4J. net. 

THE SPIRIT OF DISCIPLINE: Sermons. Crown Svo. 4^. net. 

FACULTIES AND DIFFICULTIES FOR BELIEF AND DIS- 
BELIEF. Crown Svo. 4J. net. 

THE HALLOWING OF WORK. Addresses given at Eton, January 
16-18, 1888. Smalt Svo. 2J. 

THE REDEMPTION OF WAR : Sermons. Crown Svo. 2s. net. 

Passmore.— Works by the Rev. T. H. Passmore, M.A. 

THE THINGS BEYOND THE TOMB IN A CATHOLIC LIGHT. 

Crown Svo. 2s, 6d. net. 
LEISURABLE STUDIES. Crown Svo. 4J. net. ^ [Ready. 

Contents. — The * Religious Woman ' — Preachments — Silly Ritual — The Tyr- 
anny of the Word— The Lectern — The Functions of Ceremonial — Homo Creator- 
Concerning the Pun — Proverbia. 

Percival.— THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS. Treated Theo- 
logically and Historically. By Henry R. Percival, M.A., D.D. 
Crown Svo. 55. 

Pocket Manual of Prayers for the Hours, Etc. With the 

Collects from the Prayer Book. Royal o<2mo. u. 

Powell.— CHORALIA : a Handy-Book for Parochial Precentors 
and Choirmasters. By the Rev. James Baden Powell, M.A., 
Precentor of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge. Crown Svo, 4J. 6d. net. 

Practical Reflections. By a Clergyman. With Preface by 
H. p. LiDDON, D.D., D.C.L., and the Lord Bishop of Lincoln. 
Crown Svo, 



The Book of Genesis. 
The Psalms. 55. 
Isaiah. 4J. dd. 



4s.6d. 



The Minor Prophets. 4s. 6d. 
The Holy Gospels. 4s. 6d, 
Acts to Revelation. 6s. 



20 A SELECTION OF WORKS • 

Preparatio ; or, Notes of Preparation for Holy Communion, 
founded on the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for Every Sunday in the 
Year. With Preface by the Rev. George Congreve, S.S.J. E. Crown 
Svo. 6s. net. 

Priest's Prayer Book (The). Containing Private Prayers and 

Intercessions ; Occasional, School, and Parochial Offices ; Offices for 
the Visitation of the Sick, with Notes, Readings, Collects, Hymns, 
Litanies, etc. With a brief Pontifical. By the late Rev. R. F. 
LiTTLEDALE, LL.D., D.C.L., and Rev. J. Edv^ard Vaux, M.A., 
F.S. A. Post Svo. 6s. 6d, 

Pullan.— Works by the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., Fellow 
of St. John Baptist's College. 
LECTURES ON RELIGION. Crown Svo. 6s. 

THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. Crown 
Svo. 5J. (The Oxford Library of Practical Theology. ) 

PuUer.— THE PRIMITIVE SAINTS AND THE SEE OF 

ROME. By F. W. Puller, of the Society of St. John the Evan- 
gelist, Cowley. With an Introduction by Edward, Lord Bishop of 
Lincoln. Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Svo. i6s. net. 

Pusey.— Works by the Rev. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 

PRIVATE PRAYERS. With Preface by H. P. Liddon, D.D., 
late Chancellor and Canon of St. Paul's. Royal 2,'2mo. is. 

SPIRITUAL LETTERS OF EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY, 
D.D. Edited and prepared for publication by the Rev. J. O. 
Johnston, M.A., Principal of the Theological College, Cuddesdon ; 
and the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St. 
Paul's. New and cheaper Edition, With Index. Crown Svo. ^s. net. 

Pusey.— THE STORY OF THE LIFE OF DR. PUSEY. 
By the Author of 'Charles Lowder.' With Frontispiece. Crown Svo. 
7J-. 6^3?. net. 

Randolph.— Works by B. W. Randolph, D.D., Principal of the 
Theological College and Hon. Canon of Ely. 

THE EXAMPLE OF THE PASSION: being Addresses given in St. 
Paul's Cathedral at the Mid-Day Service on Monday, Tuesday, Wed- 
nesday, and Thursday in Holy Week, and at the Three Hours' Service 
on Good Friday, 1897. Small Svo. 2S. net. 

MEDITATIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT for Every Day in 
the Year. Crown Svo. 6s. 

THE THRESHOLD OF THE SANCTUARY: being Short Chapters 
on the Inner Preparation for the Priesthood. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 



21 



Eede— THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS: A Lost Link in the 
Chain of the Church's Creed. By Wyllys Rede, D.D., Rector of 
the Church of the Incarnation, and Canon of the Cathedral, Atalanta, 
Georgia. With a Preface by Lord Halifax. Crown Svo, y. 6d, 

RIVINGTON'S DEVOTIONAL SERIES. 

i6mo, Red Borders and gilt edges. Each 2s, net 



Bickersteth's Yesterday, To- 
day, AND For Ever. Gilt edges, 

Chilcot's Treatise on Evil 
Thoughts. Red edges. 

The Christian Year. Gilt edges, 

Herbert's Poems and Proverbs. 
Gilt edges, 

Kempis' Of the Imitation of 
Christ. Gilt edges, 

Lear's (H. L. Sidney) For Days 
AND Years. Gilt edges. 

Lyra Apostolica. Poems by 
J. W. Bowden, R. H. Froude, 
J. Keble, J. H. Newman, 

R. I. WiLBERFORCE, AND I. 

Williams ; and a Preface by 
Cardinal Newman. Gilt edges. 
Francis de Sales' (St.) The 
Devout Life. Gilt edges, 

* These two in ene 



Wilson's The Lord's Supper. 

Red edges. 
♦Taylor's (Jeremy) Holy Living. 
Red edges. 

* Holy Dying. 

Red edges. 

Scudamore's Steps to the 
Altar.. Gilt edges 

Lyra Germanica: Hymns for 
THE Sundays and Chief 
Festivals of the Christian 
Year. First Series, Gilt edges. 

Law's Treatise on Christian 
Perfection. Edited by L. H. 
M. Soulsby. Gilt edges, 

Christ and His Cross : Selec- 
tions from Samuel Ruther 
ford's Letters. Edited by 
L. H. M. Soulsby. Gilt edges. 

Volume, 5^. 



\ZmOs without Red Borders, Each is, net. 



BiCKEliiTETH'S YESTERDAY, TO- 
DAY, AND For Ever. 

The Christian Year. 

Kempis' Of the Imitation of 
Christ. 

Herbert's Poems and Proverbs. 



Scudamore's Steps to the 

Altar. 
Wilson's The Lord's Supper. 
Francis de Sales' (St.) The 

Devout Life. 
♦Taylor's (Jeremy) Holy Living. 
* Holy Dying. 



* These two in one Volume. 2j. 6^. 

Robbins.— AN ESSAY TOWARD FAITH. By Wilford L 

Robbins, D.D., Dean of the Cathedral of All Saints', Albany, U.S. 
Small Svo. 3^. net. 

Robinson.— STUDIES IN THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 

By the Rev. C. H. Robinson, M.A., Canon Missioner of Ripon; 
Reader in Hausa in the University of Cambridge. Crown Svo. 35. 6d. 

Romanes.— THOUGHTS ON THE COLLECTS FOR THE 
TRINITY SEASON. By Ethel Romanes, Author of 'The Life 
and Letters of George John Romanes. ' With a Preface by the Right 
Rev. the Lord Bishop OF London. iSmo. 2s. 6d, ; gilt edges, ^s.ed. 



22 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Saaday.— Works by W. Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret 
Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 

DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF PRIESTHOOD AND SACRI- 
FICE : a Report of a Conference held at Oxford, December 13 and 
14, 1899. Edited by W. Sanday, D.D. Svo. 75. 6d, 

THE CONCEPTION OF PRIESTHOOD IN THE EARLY CHURCH 
AND IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: Four Sermons. 
Crown 8vo, y, 6d, 

INSPIRATION : Eight Lectures on the Early History and Origin of 
the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration. Being the Bampton Lectures 
for 1893. Svo. 7s. 6d, 

Sanders. — F^NELON: HIS FRIENDS AND HIS 
ENEMIES, 1651-1715. By E. K. Sanders. With Portrait. Svo. 
JOS, 6d. net. 

Scudamore.— STEPS TO THE ALTAR: a Manual of Devotion 
for the Blessed Eucharist. By the Rev. W. E. Scudamore, M.A. 
Royal S2mo. is. 
On toned faper, and rubricated, 2s,: The same, with Collects, Epistles, and 

Gospels, 2S. 6d. ; iSmo, is, net; Demy iSmo, cloth, lar^e type, is. %d.\ i6mo, 

with red borders, 2s. net ; Imperial ^2mo, limp cloth, 6d. 

Simpson.— Works by the Rev. W. J. Sparrow Simpson, M.A., 
Vicar of St. Mark's, Regent's Park. 
THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. Crown Svo. ss. 6d. 
THE CLAIMS OF JESUS CHRIST : Lent Lectures. Crown Svo. 3J. 

Skrine.— PASTOR AGNORUM : a Schoolmaster's After- 
thoughts. By John Huntley Skrine, Warden of Glenalmond, 
Author of ' A Memory of Edward Thring, etc. Crown Svo. 5^. net. 

Songs, The, of Degrees ; or, Gradual Psalms. Interleaved with 
Notes from Neale and Littledale's Commentary on the Psalms. By 
A. B. B. Crown Svo. is. net. 

Soulsby.— SUGGESTIONS ON PRAYER. By Lucy H. M. 
SouLSBY. iSmo. IS. net. 

Stone.— Works by the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Principal 
of Dorchester Missionary College. 
OUTLINES OF MEDITATIONS FOR USE IN RETREAT. Crown 
Svo. 2s. 6d. net. 

CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE: Lectures delivered in St. Paul's 
Cathedral in January 1901 ; together with a Sermon on ' The Father- 
hood of God. ' Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. net. 

OUTLINES OF CHRISTIAN DOGMA. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 

HOLY BAPTISM. Crown Svo. 55. (The Oxford Library of Practical 
Theology. ) 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 23 

Strange.— INSTRUCTIONS ON THE REVELATION OF 
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